“You said, ‘We’re not together’
So now when we kiss, I have anger issues”
Casual by Chappell Roan
Seeking praise for my mounting Duolingo streak (I watched Almodóvar’s All About My Mother and dedicated myself to learning Spanish again), my friend responded by asking if it was cringey, or rather, ‘beggy’ for her to learn the mother tongue of the guy she’s hooking up. ‘Noo’ I replied, and then abruptly paused. We both gave each other a look and burst out laughing. “I mean…” I offered, “it’s one way to apply yourself to learning”. They had been seeing each other consistently for a few months casually. Her feelings were anything but.
The question made me think about the ‘cringey’ behaviour one adopts when trying to subtly showcase one’s feelings for another, in a critically non-beggy way. Consuming media you typically wouldn’t, listening to a song that’s not your usual taste, venturing into a new book genre, following political debates which pertain to their interests… the list is somewhat endless. If anything, I think this is the very wonder of dating, the cultural exchange if you will when you meet someone. Sure, it’s fun to find someone who likes all the things you do (and similarities are key to establishing rapport), but discovering newness is where all the greatness lies.
New food, new tastes, new sounds, new ideas, new sensations. It is all part of the dating experience, and I believe it enriches. Yes, I have watched many a movie and even read a book purely through the recommendation of a guy I was talking to/seeing. Where it gets tricky is when it starts to feel one sided. Albeit my friend doesn’t speak a second language so her lover couldn’t dedicated himself to Duolingo for her. But what I hate to see is a girl adopting a whole new self in the hopes the guy she likes, or the guy she frequently has sex with, will finally take notice. What really lies at the core here is this issue of ‘casual’.
It is the most non-label of relationship labels. The enigmatic, indescribable, vastly ambiguous relationship type that subscribes to a distinct set of arbitrary rules each time it is practiced. The non-committal intimacy-seeker, the fling, the (regular)hook-up, the Friends with Benefits, the Situationship, and if you will, the Story-liketuationship. It seems we are constantly outrunning commitment and meaning through the adoption of romantic situations that often mirror that of a relationship but are labelled as something entirely different. For a generation that seeks to liberate itself from labels, we sure do have an unnecessary amount of ways to call something what it is, dating.
I am aware certain casual situations don’t resemble a relationship in any which way, or warrant that status, one night stands being a perfect example. Casual sex aficionados have mastered the utilisation of apps and other mediums through which the obtaining of a casual fling is just as simple as ordering biscuits on Deliveroo. They draw the apparent line between intimacy and sex. Most of us however find ourselves in quite a precarious state.
We are seeing people who we have convinced or that have convinced us that despite regular communication, physical intimacy, and a slew of other signals that you can deduce affection and liking from, our union is nothing more than ‘casual fun’. We are the detached attached. Merchants of nonchalance. We are convinced that the optimum part to play in a relationship is the apathetic lover.
We do our feeling selves a monumental disservice when we sequester human connection into a box of no significance. When we place visceral bonds into the realm of the unimportant and insubstantial. Perhaps it is rampant individualism, a byproduct of neoliberalism, or oversexualisation via digital mediation, maybe it’s porn again. As of late, Twitter feeds are plastered with tweets to likes of ‘I don’t need anyone’, ‘I don’t owe anybody anything’, a kind of ‘you’re born alone, you die alone’ mentality. In the same breath we wonder what happened to community? It is a fallacy also, we are social beings that thrive in community and quite literally are made to love. We aren’t meant to be alone, and we aren’t meant to be this hyper-individual.
A huge element leading to the popularity of causal relationships is of course, shifting societal and generational attitudes towards sex. Theologian Peter Vardy in his book, The Puzzle of Sex explores sexual ethics in modern society, tracing its genealogy from Old Testament and Torah teachings through to key theologians such as St Augustine, forefathers of ethics like Aquinas, right down to psychological developments towards the end of the 20th century. Living in a Christian country and therefore within a society that has been heavily influenced by Christian doctrine means it is relevant to trace how biblical teachings shaped so much of sexual morality in The West today. Though I am not religious nor Christian (but culturally raised as such), I subsequently do carry a huge interest in theological debates.
Vardy argued that early Christians established their religious identity through practicing “austere sexual morality” (Vardy, 1997: 51) using strict sexual discipline to “bear the full burden of expressing the difference between themselves and the pagan world” (1997:52). Early traditions were informed by the somewhat sexual deviant posturing as an asexual himself, St. Augustine, who argued sex even within marriage was a regrettable yet necessary task. It was an act married couples would “descend with certain sadness” (1997: 53) into and any attempts at seeking pleasure was inherently sinful, since lust was a byproduct ‘original sin’.
Some of the most sex negative thinking one can lay their eyes on can be seen as preached and practiced by early Christian scholars who shaped what we know to be the Christian and Catholic church today. Those who contested these austere sexual ideas were denounced as heretics. Though it may seem we have moved on from such punitive, negative thinking around sex, these ideas, even practised at a lesser extent are still found in many households, serving as the foundation of respectability politics we still see play out in online discourse today.
Vardy proposes that we take an integrated approach, taking most of our teachings from psychology, and that we view sex as a free act, but also a “gift of intimacy” (Vardy, 1997: 135). This distinction is important. He argues that for the most part, sex had lost its mystique by the 90s. Whilst I don’t agree that sex should we shrouded in mystery as that borders on the realm of taboo, I understand his argument. We are saturated with sex in our daily lives, even just through imagery alone. Modern day iterations of sex are often framed instrumentally as a function for physical release. The beauty has been stripped away. Taking this ‘function’ approach, according to Vardy is inherently dehumanising, nor is it a sufficient approach to sex and wider sexual ethics.
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward
The dichotomy between sexuality and spirituality also does sex a disservice. He argues, “integration lies in seeing how we can be both sexual and spiritual simultaneously” (Vardy, 1997: 113). Ultimately, he believes in the sanctity of sex and pushes for its adoption. He rejects the notion of casual sex, justified through the Kantian argument that asserts people should be treated as an end in themselves and hook-up culture too often muddies the waters of this.
For Vardy, sex should only be in the context of a deep, committed and loving relationship. At first, I thought it to be a bit of an archaic and traditional view. Then I thought, well is there much harm in believing in the sanctity of sex once it is divorced from silly ideas of purity and chastity. Instead, we can view its sacred nature through acknowledging it’s gravity, depth, and meaning as a unitive, “life-giving” experience (1997: 123) (and not just in the sense of reproduction).
Sex is sacred, “with a quality of enchantment which can be religious in its fervour” (Giddens, 1992: 38) and it should be honoured in all of its complexities as an ecstatic union of bodies. By no means does it have to take place in a committed, monogamous relationship for it to be meaningful or to honour this sentiment as Vardy suggests. Rather it should always acknowledge the breadth of sex and allow for emotion. Postmodern thought has convinced us sex is meaningless, and we should approach it as such. Perhaps both sex and relationships could bear sweeter, more satisfactory fruit if we put the meaning back into it. If we remember that it is okay for things to matter. To feel deeply, or even just to feel at all.
Current conceptions of sex merely as function operate from an “impoverished understanding” (1997: 138). Giddens, in The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love & Eroticism in Modern Societies, favours Vardy’s argument, asserting that current “sexual permissiveness is not at all the same as liberation” which “conceals its oppressiveness beneath a gloss of enjoyment” (1992: 168).
I am not well-versed in the practice of ‘no strings attached’ and the method to its madness so I can’t vouch for its allurement, but anything that requires you to minimise yourself and diminish your true feelings is never worth it, (great) sex aside. Anything that demands the shrinking of oneself is an experience that will ultimately be unfulfilling. To obscure feelings, hide intentions, and operate outside of authenticity is usually what a casual relationship begs of us. Why pursue romance with the intention of being detached? It feels both antithetical to connection and in many ways, sacrilegious.
Dating should be casual in the sense that things operate in a sense of flow, and you navigate accordingly. You see where things naturally advance to, how feelings instinctively develop, or don’t. By rejecting casual relationships, I do not mean date with explicit intent of something suffocatingly serious before you’ve even said hello. Rather, we should not enter situations which ask us to adopt nonchalance as a primary mode of engagement and to silence our feeling self.
Studying the development of relationships fractured by modernity, Giddens proposes ‘confluent love’, a means of being truly vulnerable with another. Practicing “active, contingent love” with equal emotional in/outpouring (1992: 61), as an alternative to romantic love. The latter has been stifled by a longstanding “egalitarian strain” (1992: 62) in which women are left pulling the short straw. He reframes sexuality as eroticism, cultivating feeling so that sexuality is imbued with a range of emotional principles expressed through the body. It is the renewal of the spiritual and operates through mutuality. Eroticism does not shudder form the feeling self, it invites it.
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In Timothee Chalamet’s SAG award acceptance speech, he makes it known that he is pursuing greatness, keen on establishing himself as one of the greats. Some believe this outward display of commitment to his passion marks an attitudinal shift from our current era of feigning nonchalance towards what we deeply care about. It is no longer embarrassing to show you care, and retrospectively we are left wondering how it ever got to a point in which that was the case.
Casual relationships are enticing, and most of us have fallen prey. I have had to remind myself of the very points I have made in this essay. They serve as a safety valve for the avoidant, the bitter, or for those carrying freshly wounded hearts encumbered with loss. Perhaps they work in that capacity if the other party is privy to this intention. Ultimately, when entering into any relationship, we should strive for connection that accommodates meaning. Sex does not have to be detached from emotional intimacy, seen only through the lens of functionality. Sex instead should be revered for the divine practice it is. Really, there is nothing ‘casual’ about it. We must resist a “self-invited and self-protected lovelessness” (Vardy, 1997: 169) in attempts to posture a facile mode of coolness and/or protect our hearts from hurt. We must foster, at every level, human connection.
Fritz Von Eric, 2024
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