Q: I hear a lot of people speak about hookup and they say all adolescents and young people do it. At school they think I am weird because I have never done it. The truth is I feel strange and I would like to do it. Is there something wrong in it?

A: There is a lot of talk about the culture of the new phenomenon of hookup, that is, casual sexual acts. It would seem that something as casual as an encounter between two young people for a moment of pleasure should not have any consequence, and yet, many of the young people who have experienced it say such acts leave them empty and with a sense of loss.

A young woman from Notre Dame University commented in an article for Our Sunday Visitor: “Hookups disfigure the interpretation of what true love is. You dehumanize the other person when you use him or her for your sexual satisfaction. You devalue yourself allowing the other person to do the same to you.”

According to experts this type of casual relationship presents many obstacles to true happiness. They harm the capacity to maintain a committed and faithful relationship and place people in the habit of making an object of the other person. The capacity to make strong relationships is lost and the psyche is harmed.