i haven’t been an avid book reader in all my years (actually i dread it most of the time since i just fall asleep after reading a few pages), but riding the bus every morning/evening is changing my perspective.  while browsing through myspace yesterday unhooked was the ”featured book” and i was intrigued by the review heading.

a few excerpts from the washington post’s review:

In our teens and early twenties, sexual relationships are less about intimacy than about expanding our intimate knowledge of people — a very different thing. Through sex, we discover irrefutable otherness (he dreams of being madly in love; she hates going to sleep alone ), and we are scared and enraptured, frustrated and inspired. We learn less about intimacy in our youthful sex lives than we do about humanity.

and these two paragraphs really caught my attention… 

In a culture that values money and fame above all, that eschews failure, bad luck, trouble and pain, none of us speaks the language of love and forbearance. But it is not hooking up that has created this atmosphere. Hooking up is either a faithful reflection of the culture, a Darwinian response to a world where half the marriages end in divorce, or it is an attempt at something new. Perhaps, this generation, by making sex less precious, less a commodity, will succeed in putting simple humanity back into sex. Why bring someone into your bed? Maybe because she is brilliant and has a whimsical sense of humor, or he is both sarcastic and vulnerable, and has beautiful eyes.

And perhaps as this generation grows up, they will come to relish other sides of an intimate relationship more than we have: the friendship, the shared humor, the familiar and loved body next to you in bed at night. This is the most hopeful outcome of the culture Stepp describes, but no less possible than the outcome she fears — a generation unable to commit, unable to weather storms or to stomach second place or really to love at all.

i might have to read this one since i at times have a very skewed perception of sex and relationships.  i don’t think it’s a bad thing or that i’m a bad person, i’m just curious why after having loving parents who have been together for over 30 years, who never layed a hurtful hand on me, encouraged me to do the right things do i tend to have ”unconventional” views.