Yeah, You Can Have A No Strings Fling

Hey, enough trash talk about millennials being the hook-up generation.

- Julie Vadnal

Plenty of single women have been having sex with whoever they want, whenever they want, at least since Cosmo’s beloved late Helen Gurley Brown wrote the book on it (Sex and the Single Girl, 1962). Back then, it was controversial for women to casually date and have uncommitted sex. But today? It should be anything but.

Pop culture is full of women getting theirs with no strings attached. Issa Rae’s character on Insecure juggles what she calls a hotation of men. And on The Bold Type, journalist Jane Sloan expands her sexual experiences by occasionally hooking up with a sexy co-worker.

Real women are also in on the action. 40 per cent of singles have dated more than one person at a time, and 55 per cent have had a friends-with-benefits arrangement*.

‘These days, millennials are extending periods of casual and precommitment dating in order to explore their options,’ says biological anthropologist Helen Fisher. This can be a stealth strategy for eventually finding your spouse (if you want one) without missing out on potential candidates. ‘You’re also learning about yourself and putting your life in order so that if you do walk down that aisle, you know what you’ve got, you want what you’ve got, and you can keep what you’ve got,’ says Fisher.

For those uninterested in a long-term love, playing the proverbial field can just be pure fun. ‘Hooking up can make you feel happy and satisfied,’ says sex researcher Justin Garcia. ‘You’re getting romantic and sexual highs while giving a metaphorical middle finger to society’s traditional standards of what your love life should look like.’ In these increasingly ‘you do you’ times, that can feel amazing.