Love in the Age of Hooking Up

a talk by Jon Schaff, a man about town

Some of my students find great humor in the fact that I am the one speaking about “Love in the age of hooking up.”  I can’t completely blame them.  If there was ever an example of “Those who can’t do, teach” this is it.  Still, this subject of the love between men and women is of academic interest to me, although it surely is not purely academic.  How can one study love without in some sense studying oneself?  Indeed, this is one reason why I find the subject so fascinating.  It is an excuse to try to figure out what I am doing wrong.   But I find the subject interesting as a political scientist as well.  Augustine, Plato, Aristotle, indeed most every philosopher of ancient times took the family seriously, because the concord of the family was seen as a mirror of the concord of the republic.  And where do families start, if not from the attraction, and hopefully the love affairs, between a man and a woman?  Alan Bloom writes, and I believe this is true with all my heart, “Isolation, a sense of lack of profound contact with other human beings, seems to be the disease of our times.  We are lonely while living in society, with all the social needs for others yet unable to satisfy them.”  In the words of Alexis de Tocqueville, “In democratic societies each citizen is habitually busy with the contemplation of a very petty object, which is himself.”

            Much of what I want to talk about stems from the assumption that men and women are naturally pointed toward one another, that they are meant to be together in order to cure the ill of isolation.  Yet so much of modern thinking attacks this very idea, so wedded are we to individualism, and the era of hooking up is only a sad result of that.  Perhaps a definition of hooking up is an order, as maybe some of the older set are not as hip as those of us who hang around college kids all day.  Hooking up is best explained, I think, by Tom Wolfe in an essay called “Hooking Up” which appears in his recent book of the same title.  Wolfe describes the unromantic dating scene at the end of the 20^th Century.  “Girls and boys” head out in packs “hoping to meet each other fortuitously.  She would give him a nod, or he would give her the nod, and the two of them would retire to a halfway private room and ‘hook up. ’”  Hooking up, Wolfe writes, has caused a retooling of the old baseball terminology.  “In the era of hooking up, first base meant deep kissing, groping or fondling, second base meant oral sex, third base meant going all the way, and home plate meant learning each other’s names.”  Wendy Shalit, in her book that every college age person should own, A Return to Modesty, discusses how empty hooking up is, noting the confluence of hooking up and alcohol. “This kind of drinking is really a stark admission that in fact we realize that we are not like the lower animals, that our romantic longings and hopes should inform our most intimate actions, and that if the prevailing wisdom decrees ‘hook ups’ don’t matter, that sex is no big deal, then we must numb ourselves [with alcohol] to go through with it.”  These random encounters, one can hardly call them affairs, are all too typical in our time. 

What I want to do first tonight is to talk about some of the problematic views of love, especially erotic love, that are commonly held.  Next I want to salvage eros from those who I think misunderstand erotic love.  Lastly I will argue that eros must eventually submit itself to agape, or Christian love and charity.  In doing all of this I will freely admit something that all future teachers in the room need to know, so listen closely teachers to what I am about to say.  The art of teaching is the art of stealing from the right sources.  Contained in this talk will be no original thoughts.  They are all stolen from John Paul II, Alan Bloom, C.S. Lewis, Denis De Rougemont, Jane Austen and others.  For purposes of delivery I won’t always cite them or tell you when I am quoting them, but they are there.  I am a firm believer that there are good ideas and bad ideas, but there really aren’t any new ideas.  So if there is anything in this talk that makes you go, “Wow, that is really ingenious,” it isn’t coming from me. I assure you, I stole it. 

In his book, Love and Friendship, Alan Bloom identifies three intellectual movements that have impoverished our language of love by misinterpreting what it means to be a human being with erotic needs.  The first culprit he identifies is my own profession, that of social science, and its tendency to reduce the most beautiful aspects of humanity to raw data.  Here we particularly think of Alfred Kinsey and the infamous Kinsey Report, which shocked post-war America with its documentation of the various, shall we say, creative ways in which Americans have sex.  And a lot of it too, evidently.   Kinsey made the move from the fact of promiscuity to its legitimacy.  The social scientist has difficulty saying which sexual practices are better than others, for that is not the scientist’s job, thus he ends up suggesting that they are all equal.  In marriage, or out of marriage.  In love, or out of love.  Bloom writes, “If someone tells you that sex is pleasant, that there is a wonderful variety of ways to have it, that there is no rational basis for inhibition, and practically everybody does it, what implications do you suppose follow?”  Bloom’s second target, Sigmund Freud, is much the same.  Our erotic nature is a low base animal desire that yearns to fulfill itself, but must be sublimated to social needs.  John Paul II criticizes Freud for only being concerned with the subjective, i.e. selfish, purpose of sex, not the inherent value of another human person.  For the Freudian psychologist and the social scientist eros means sex, not love.  This is not so for the post-modern feminist, the third of Bloom’s “axis of eros.”  No, for them eros is not love either; it is power.  Here men and women meet on the battlefield of love.  It is a power sharing arrangement.  As Bloom writes, “The worst distortion of all is to turn love, a relation that is founded on natural sweetness, mutual caring, and the contemplation of eternity in shared children into a power struggle.”  This is the war of all against all, and the only possible peace is to be found in artificial constructs such as contract.  Thus we get this lame description of the joining of men and women called the “relationship” as in Timmy and Susie are “in a relationship.”  This is such an inconsequential way of describing what should be one of the most beautiful things that human beings can experience.  “Relationship” is what you call two parties who have a contract with each other, such as a “business relationship.”  I have a relationship with my mechanic, and my dentist, but please don’t start the rumors.  People involved in a contracted exchange of goods have “relationships.”  Humans overcome by eros have love affairs.  Consider this passage:

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

This is what Romeo says the first time he lays eyes on Juliet.  Does it not do an injustice to them to say Romeo and Juliet had “a relationship”?  As Bloom writes, “Animals have sex, humans have eros.  Coupling begins in sexual desire, but has as its end love.”  This is the true meaning of eros, erotic love.  It is the longing for another.  A longing for completion.  A realization that humans are meant to be together, and it is the yearning to no longer be alone.  It is this longing that leads us to seek a companion in the opposite sex.  John Paul writes, “Love is of its very nature inimical to division and isolation…A man therefore needs a woman, so to say, to complete his own being, and woman needs a man in the same way.”  This is a reflection of our human limitations.  We are not self-sufficient.  The need for another is a reflection of our need for God to make our lives whole.  Or as scripture puts it, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.”  So God created the animals.  “But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.”  And so Eve was created bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh.  And “therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” 

            The power of the desire is measured by how stupid we act when under its spell.  And here we get to something I have A LOT of personal experience in.  The excitement of romance is the mystery of discovering the humanity of the other person.  It’s like when a friend tells you how a really suspenseful movie ends.  The thrill of discovery is destroyed.   You know the ending, but you don’t know the story. The mystery of another person causes us to do all sorts of silly things.  Who’d have it any other way?  Just this past weekend I read an essay by John Derbyshire about, of all things, Joe Millionaire, and I must say that it is one of the drop dead funniest things I have read in ages. It falls under the category of it’s funny cause it’s true.  Derbyshire’s argument is that the attraction of shows like Joe Millionaire is that the people on the show act so stupid as they try to woo someone, and this is something we can all appreciate.  Derbyshire writes, and I am going to quote him at length, “Like everyone else in the Western world, I did a certain amount of dating before I got married. From up here in the comfortable status of Old Married Guy, I am ready to confess that I loathed the entire miserable business. For one thing, I am not physically attractive. My nose is too big, my chin is too small, my shoulders are too narrow and somewhat rounded, I have poor posture and flat feet, my teeth are terrible and my ears stick out. I have done my best with all this, as one must, but I am coldly aware that no woman ever swooned when I walked into a room. I have no small talk, and don't have the essential knack of making a woman feel that I am fascinated by her. I lack this latter art so comprehensively, in fact, that I was often not able to convey to a woman that I was fascinated by her even when I actually was fascinated by her. The number of men who can honestly say that they find it easy and painless to strike up acquaintances with women is, I feel sure, pretty small. And those guys are all shallow, contemptible cads — everybody knows that. In any case, one of the things I remember most vividly is the problem of finding anything to say to a new female acquaintance. Once you get past name, rank, and serial number, some creativity is called for. This, however, leads into treacherous territory. "Creative" can all too easily slip over the edge into "weird." The party of the second part is at this point looking for a certain quality of reliability — for some assurance that this guy she has agreed to spend an evening with is normal, sensible, solid, capable, and respectful. She's not looking for a stand-up comedy routine.” End Derbyshire quote. 

Our lack of understanding of love only adds to Derbyshire’s musings about the difficulty of men and women communicating with each other.  This is why I think we experienced a bit of a Jane Austen boomlet a few years back.  I remember watching the News Hour with Jim Lehr during this period and they had a discussion of Jane Austen.  The interviewer wanted to know why Austen was suddenly so popular.  Of course the pedantic English professor said it was about women finding stories about strong females to be liberating.  Right, it’s about power.  And there was poor Roger Rosenblatt, who could only say, “I think people are returning to Jane Austen because she writes good novels.”  I think people, women in particular, find reading Jane Austen rewarding because she does tell good love stories, and love stories designed to educate our taste, and better sexual education would be as concerned with the development of taste as it would the prevention of disease or pregnancy.  Austen doesn’t just tell us that people fall in love, she tells us why.  She tells us what kind of character a woman should fall in love with, and which she should avoid.  And the same for men and the women they should seek, and those they should turn away. In Pride and Prejudice, the characters of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett show us what masculinity and femininity should look like, although they are each flawed characters and need to learn a little in the novel.  He, after all, is too prideful, and she is too quick to judge, indeed she is prejudiced.  And Austen shows us some of the errors of love, such as with poor Lydia in Pride and Prejudice, who, alas, is a silly romantic in love with being in love, and thus chooses badly. 

This is the problem with eros.  It is fickle.  Passion fades.  This is why Austen’s heroines are so concerned with finding a man who is decent and moral, not just someone who can write a passionate letter or dance a good dance.  What is it going to be like to live the rest of your life with this person?  What will it be like when time does its inevitable damage to our bodies, and the raw physical attraction has faded?  Indeed here the story of Romeo and Juliet is instructive.  Romeo himself has a rather serious character flaw.  At the beginning of the play he is in love with Rosalind and is convinced that he will never love another.  Alas, she as chosen to live in a convent.  Romeo will never love again.  Until he sees Juliet.  And now he is convinced she is the love of his life, and he will never love another.  This, as you all know, leads to tragic consequences.  Eros is ultimately selfish.  At the risk of mixing Jerry McGuire references, eros says, “ I want you to complete me.”  It wants to be satisfied to the exclusion of all else.  John Paul argues, “The emotions themselves are, experience shows, rather fickle, and so cannot lastingly and exclusively determine the attitude of one human being to another…So it is not obvious whether this inner exuberance of sentiment, and the tendency to idealize the object of love which goes with it is a strength or a weakness…We do however know that by itself, as a form of reciprocal relationship between a man and a woman, it is insufficient.” 

Thus the importance of agape, or what is known as Christian love or charity.  This is the love that God has for us.  It is selfless.  It does not seek its own advantage.  It is akin to, “He who would save his soul shall lose it, and he who would lose his soul for my sake shall find it again.”  We find this in the commandment in the Gospel of John, “Love each other as I have loved you.”  And no greater love has a man than to lay down his life for his friends.  Few of us actually give our physical lives for someone else, but in Christian love fulfilled we do give up our selves to another, completely and wholly.  While passion is a good thing, it is not something on which two people can build a life together.  Denis De Rougmont writes, “Romance feeds on obstacles, short excitations, and partings; marriage, on the contrary, is made up of wont, daily propinquity, growing accustomed to one another.”  It reminds me of that great song from My Fair Lady, which I think is dead on about the highest love:

I’ve grown accustomed to her face

She almost makes the day begin

I’ve grown accustomed to the tune

She whistles night and noon

Her smiles her frowns

Her ups her downs

Are second nature to me now

Like breathing out and breathing in

I was serenely independent

And content before we met

Surely I could always be that way again

And yet…

I’ve grown accustomed to her look, accustomed to her voice

Accustomed to her face

There are any number of people for whom we can experience erotic love.  I am not one who thinks there is just one person for everyone.  This is one of the causes of failed marriages.  People do legitimately fall in passionate love with someone else.  The passions are indeed fickle.  What makes the love of a Christian marriage special is that it says, “There are any number of people I could love.  It is you I choose to be faithful to. It is you I choose to give my life to.” 

A Christian marriage, which leads hopefully to a Christian family, is an image of God’s selfless love.  Indeed it is a reflection of the Holy Trinity.  In high school theology Fr. Krough taught us that the trinity is made up of one Ousia and three Hypostasis.  Yeah, I didn’t get it either. It means one being, with three persons.  The Christian family is similar, although not the same, to be sure.  But still, there is one family.  They are joined by the love of God.  The marriage is joined as a sacrament of Christ.  They are individual personalities in the family, but wherever they go and what ever they do, they are still one family, one marriage.  Again, the two become one. 

It is interesting, and against the conventional wisdom, that married people report greater sexual satisfaction than do single people.  In marriage there is a built in trust that allows for a true giving of the self.  It is impossible to put your trust in another human being knowing that his or her aim is utility or pleasure.  This is why monogamy is important.  It is impossible to give yourself totally to more than one person.  Without that commitment, and without the openness to the creation of new human life, sex become just one more interesting thing to do together. It could be let’s have sex, or let’s play tennis.  They are both something to do that is pleasurable.  Or it becomes, “I want all of you, except your ability to reproduce,” which is a rejection of an important part of the human person. John Paul writes, that “through their conjugal life and a full sexual relationship [they] agree to take on a special part in creation.” 

            This giving of yourself totally to another means being friends as well as lovers.  It is common to hear married folk say that their spouse is also their best friend.  Aristotle writes, “Those who wish for their friend’s good for their friend’s sake are friends in the truest sense.”  Or in the words of De Rougmont, “For to be faithful is to have decided to accept another being for his or her own sake, in his or her own limitation and reality.”  One of my personal treasures is a book that belonged to my mother.  It is called “A Catholic Girl’s Manual and Sunday Missal.”  It was published in 1955.  In it talks of friendship: “Your best friend will be as eager for you to enter heaven as she is to get there herself, and she will inspire you to the same spirituality she practices herself.  These are holy and true friendships. And of this it has wisely been observed (The Book of Sirach), ‘A Faithful friend is a strong defense, and he that hath found him hath found a treasure.’”  Lewis says friendship is two people standing side by side, while eros is two people facing each other.  I see no reason why in Christian love the two cannot exist together.  Assisting passion, friendship allows two people to build a life together.  In one of the more powerful passages on love I have ever read, Denis De Rougmont writes, “To choose a woman for a wife is not to say to Miss So and So, You are the ideal of my dreams, you more than gratify all my desires, you are the Iseult altogether lovely and desirable, of who I want to be the Tristan.  For this would be deceit and nothing enduring can be founded on deceit.  Nobody in the world can gratify me; no sooner would I be gratified than I would change!  To choose a woman for a wife is to say to Miss So and So, I want to live with you as you are.  For this really means; It is you I choose to share my life with me, and this is the only evidence there can be that I love you.  If anybody says, Is that all, and this is no doubt what many young people will say, having been led by virtue of the myth to expect goodness knows what divine transports.  He must have had little experience in solitariness and dread, and little experience indeed of solitary dread.” 

            To live your life with and for another.  This is the greatest love.  This is the love Christ asks of us and there are few places it reaches such perfection than in a Christian marriage.  A Christian marriage, and thus Christian courtship, serves many human needs, but the ultimate need it serves is to give people an image of God’s love.  Any love affair should enhance both people’s chances at salvation.   A married friend recently told me that when he and his wife went through marriage prep no one ever asked, “Will your wife or husband help you toward salvation.”  I hope this is the exception, not the rule.  Love is serious business.  It does not mean it is not also fun, passionate, pleasurable, even silly.  In the words of Sinatra, “And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love you.”  These things are often the beginning of love.  Love’s real end, though, is the salvation of our souls.  The most intimate loves of our lives should serve this purpose above all, not the least is the love we have for Christ.  For aside from the love of Christ, total love of another human being is the most profound way in which the longing for another is satisfied.   Everything else is just “hooking up.” 

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