Human Sexuality - University of Texas at Arlington - Chapter Twelve

Casual Sex

Sex with people whom you are not in love or committed.

Hooking Up

Has a lot of connotations and meanings attached to it. Research suggests hooking up is associated with sexual dissatisfaction among college students. Men are riskier with sex and tend to overestimate their partners comfort with riskier sexual activities. Most college students seek meaningfulness, empowerment, or pleasure when hooking up. Women are often not fulfilled when engaging in hook up culture.

Serial Monogamy

The practice of having an exclusive relationship with one person, breaking up, and going on to another exclusive relationship.

Friends With Benefits

Singles involved sexually with a friend or acquaintance for some mutual benefit, such as shared rent, but without commitment.

Polyamory

The intentional acceptance of one’s partner having sexual relations with someone else, typically for a significant period of time.

Cohabitation

The state of living together or sharing the same space as if the couple were married but without legal marriage. Currently there are more self-described cohabitating heterosexual couples than queer couples, though this may be due to continuing stigma and fear. Cohabitation sometimes includes keeping separate households and occasionally living together, or simple saying you’re a couple.

Living Apart Together

The cultural idea that two people can be a couple but live apart in separate households.

Winnowing Hypothesis

People become increasingly selective and more careful during the process of dating, mating, cohabitating, and marriage.

Heterogamy

Refers to a marriage between two individuals of different ethnicities, income, social class, or religion.

Homogamy

Marriage between individuals who are culturally similar.

Dual Income, No Sex

People who are so busy that they cannot cope with intimacy or they omit sex from the relationship, as reported in media.