Let’s Be Real — Lots of Men Are Only Against The Hookup Culture if They Can’t Participate in It

It’s all just deflection.

One year ago, a British friend, whom I shall name Matthew for anonymity, left for Southeast Asia for an extended holiday.

The intention was to explore each country within the sub-region for a few months or so, accumulating one year of travel experience before heading back home.

Matthew, who happens to be an unremarkable, average-looking 25-year-old white man, never had much dating success in the UK. Before leaving for Asia, he had at best a handful of dates and one short-term relationship under his belt, and this wasn’t due to a lack of trying.

He tried the whole Tinder thing, attending social meetups and even clubbing to meet women, but with little luck, that is until traveling to Asia.

Just to put things into perspective.

Tinder in the UK had all but a few dozen matches for the year he had been using it. But no sooner had he landed in Asia did he amass the same amount of matches, accumulating to over a hundred after a week. In the same period, he managed to hook up with three attractive girls, a pace he managed to keep up on a semi-regular basis during his travels. It got to such a point he started to have a bit of a reputation as a ladies’ man among his friends.

I’m sure for some, Matthew’s newfound success with women doesn’t come as much of a surprise. It’s pretty much an open secret that any white Western man who travels to Asia, particularly to developing nations like Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, and Indonesia, will have the pick of the litter when it comes to women, no thanks to good old Western privilege intermixed with white worship.

My friend’s escapades remind me of a semi-popular comic strip called “Charisma Man,” published in Japanzine, a monthly magazine for expats.

The comic strip is a tongue-in-cheek play on the superhero genre, mocking the unjustifiably overconfident Western man who, while being a loser in his own home country, transforms from a skinny nerdy white guy into a super attractive hulk of a man when he is around Japanese people — one lusted after by women and envied by men.

In true fashion of the genre, Charisma Man has one weakness, and that is Western women. When around them, he loses his powers and becomes his original unattractive self.

But I digress.

My aim is not to delve into the racial dynamics of white men and Asian women. What I do want to focus on is Matthew’s attitude shift once he moved to Asia and how it relates to the topic at hand.

While in the UK, Matthew swore up and down how he despised the hookup culture, asserting that people who participated in it were morally reprehensible and that they were the reason finding a decent long-term partner was so hard in the West.

That all changed once he started getting some sexual attention, hooking up became just fine and dandy. Even so, he still looked down on women who gave up the goods on the first date, something I find peculiar considering he was doing the same thing he despises women for engaging in.

This way of thinking is not uncommon in men

Some people are going to hate the idea of hooking up, even when done responsibly. For them, sex is a big deal — it’s meant to be sacred, only to be shared between people who are committed to each other. You will seldom hear these people complain about the hookup culture since they do not engage in nor desire casual sex; they know what they want and they won’t compromise on their values.

But then you have guys like Matthew, who I believe make up a significant portion of men, rile against the hookup culture, not out of principle, but because they are not in the position to participate.

Essentially, the hookup culture serves as a reminder of the types of relationships or sex they aren’t able to get.

And don’t even get me started on the hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance displayed by men who do manage to engage in the hookup culture while simultaneously despising it. The glaring inconsistency between their words and actions is perplexing.

The hookup culture isn’t the problem

The hookup culture is nothing new. I know this might come as a surprise, especially for those born after the 2000s.

I remember back in my early teenage years, long before social media, which seems to be the primary medium over-hyping this phenomenon, listening to my older cousins talking about their experiences with girls they had hooked up with from the club.

People back then were still hooked up the same way they are now; the only difference is everything is blown out of proportion, no thanks to social media, which seems to be the primary conduit for over-hyping this phenomenon.

To give a better sense of the situation:

The average number of sex partners over a lifetime in the UK is four, with only a quarter of the population admitting to having more than 10 partners. While in the US, the number is a little higher at five.

And, according to this Axios and Generation Lab survey, only 15% of college students, a demographic one would expect to be hooking up the most, only did so once in the past year.

Furthermore, a study by Match shows that 70% of singles in America are looking for relationships. So people are not having nor seeking casual sex willy-nilly, as we are being led to believe. If anything, the number of people who regularly hook up has been and continues to be in the minority.

The argument that the hookup culture makes it harder to have relationships holds little water because relationships are what most people seek by default. If two compatible people meet and enjoy each other’s company, nothing is stopping them from continuing to see each other in an exclusive capacity, hookup culture or not.

People who blame the hookup culture for difficulties in dating and relationships are only deflecting from what should be the central focus, which is the self.

Meaning, that individuals who are self-aware, confident in who they are, and clear about their wants and needs can navigate the hookup culture with ease and intentionality. They are not the people who will engage in it just because it’s become convenient. They are going to have an easier time finding the types of relationships they desire because they understand to attract someone of value, you have to become valuable in your own right.

My friend was fortunate; he moved thousands of miles away to a place where his nationality and skin color made him more valuable to a specific type of woman, so he didn’t need to do anything but just be himself.

But I know for a fact that if he truly desired and worked on himself, learned how to relate to women better, developed some charm and charisma, as well as improved on his looks, he could have had a much easier time hooking up or even finding a happy, long-term committed relationship even in his home country. And this goes for other men of his ilk.

As for what ended up happening to my British friend, the last time I spoke with him, he had left his womanizing ways behind and entered a committed relationship with a local in one of the Southeast Asian countries he had chosen to call home. He has no intention of returning.