Hook-ups: Sex in the Car Pool Lane

Some observations, nothing more. I don't tell people how to live their lives, and I'm a big believer in "Judge not lest ye be judged." And before you hurl invectives at kindly Cat, make sure you read the entire post.

Casual sex is a given in today's society. After all the hippies of the 60s became mortgage bankers and pillars of the community, the pendulum on sexual mores never swung back to a neutral position. I'm not sure that's a good thing, however, at the risk of sounding like a sexual centrist.

Here's the problem: people decide to have no-strings-attached sex and then return to their neutral corners. No commitments. What could be simpler? A few months later, jealousy rears its ugly head. The classic Seinfeld episode come to mind, the one in which Jerry and Elaine decide that a little extracurricular activity in the bedroom isn't going to affect their relationship or their ability to date others. It didn't work. Bruised egos and jealousy were in plain sight by minute twenty-two of the sitcom episode.

And that's what I've seen in my friends ever since my college days: bruised feelings after a casual relationship goes sour. We can proclaim sex as sport all we want, but something in our DNA still equates "the deed" with intimacy and love. Perhaps the biggest impediment to the success of casual sex is that humans are possessive by nature. This trait has been in our genes for a hundred thousand years, and we're not going to expunge it in three decades because Erica Jong says we can. If you are happily immune from the problems stated above, I won't dispute the fact.

Casual sex is a way to get from point A to point B. It's a shortcut to gratification, like riding in the carpool lane. If you tell me it works for you, I'll say "Congratulations!" All Cat is saying is a big caveat emptor--buyer beware.