Listened this am to NPR’s Morning edition and a story on “hooking up.” Definitely worth your listening for the 8 minute story. Here’s a couple of amazing thoughts (not quotes) from female interviewees:
1. The hook-up is all about the tension, build-up, and the sex.
2. Dating actually costs too much money; hook-ups are much cheaper
3. Talking about being in love is more embarrassing than talking about one’s sex life (hooking up) on the radio.
4. Dating a guy means bringing him into your circle of close friends and the preference is to have the hook-up but do nothing that could harm real friendships
5. It is vulnerable to be needy of love. Not so of sex.
Scary stuff here. Think about it. Taking your clothes off and sharing genital sexual activity with an acquaintance puts you in a less vulnerable position than asking someone out for a formal date? Can someone explain that one to me?
Musings on Faith and Psychology 
Our society has decided that we can have sex without the love component. Men apparently have been able to do this for a while and women are just learning how to do it. TV and Movies don’t make it any easier, and in fact encourage the idea that you can have great sex with no consequences.
But we know better than that don’t we? Sex, generally speaking, complicates life more than it simplifies it. Emotions get caught in the crossfire, people are unable to set boundaries, and I haven’t even gotten into the biological ramifications.
I try to scare away my teenage clients from having sex with too many partners by calling it “swapping fliuds.” This has an arguably scientific and almost vulgar connotation to it, but it scares the bejezus out of them! When one considers the possible prospects of pregnancy, disease and what have you, suddenly sex without relationships is not so romantic. Relationships require more work and open you up to more risk (emotionally speaking anyway). So I suppose it depends on your risk appetite.
Your last sentence says much. It would seem that risk appetite may turn off the logical center of the brain…
I think the materialist/reductionist worldview we’ve embraced as a society has paved the way pretty clear for this understanding of sex, and our media actualizes it. Advertising and pornography communicate that sexuality and emotions are unrelated. In a culture where sex is defined as a biological need, there’s no embarrassment in expressing that need. It seems like love and attachment on the other hand are often viewed by culture as a weakness. There’s so many avenues by which this is communicated in our culture…
I can’t really see how someone who isn’t personally religious would buy into sex being more than a physical act at this point in our culture.
I wanted to listen to the NPR piece before commenting, and did so last night.
Phil, to answer the final question of your post: No! I definitely can’t explain this to you, because I don’t understand it at all.
It certainly does seem to be a watershed shift in society, though, and I agree with you that it is quite frightening.
I remember from my psychology classes an experiment in which electrodes were implanted into the pleasure center of rat’s brains. The rats were given the capacity to self-stimulate, as much as they desired. Some died, because they refused to stop long enough to satisfy their hunger. Avoiding pain and seeking to mask it with pleasure are natural, powerful motivators; ask any addict. This is why the pornography industry is running rampant. Real, value bearing life is painful hard work until you are trained and strengthened to it.
Heb. 12:11 Now all discipline seems painful at the time, not joyful. But later it produces the fruit of peace and righteousness for those trained by it.
People think sex is merely a physical (and healthy) thing to do, so hooking up is natural to this mindset. I have a friend that has guys she “hooks up” with on a regular basis with the purpose of having sex, like that’s all they do together. She told me that she has needs and has given up with finding true love. She told me, “It’s just sex.” Oh, it’s so much more!