Love's Labor's Lost

Student 1: and we layed [sic] in bed and talked for like four hours and like had sex during the whole thing; it was really like a moment; like he held me sooo tight for the rest of the night; i woke up like really close to him; and i felt something . . . .

Student 2: that's incredible intimacy . . . do you love him?

Student 1: i am scared of loving him.

Student 2 because of what being in love will do to you

Student 1: because of what does that say about me . . . i'm just a weepy girl who relies on someone . . . i want to be independent and i think that it is important for women of our generation but by saying i love someone and need him it's like contradictory . . . hypocritical . . . but i also don't want to give into love because i am scared he won't call me . . . and i will be heartbroken and then feel like a stupid girl that should have known better."

(Several young women asked not to be named in this report when discussing their private lives.)

There are costs, of course, to keeping love at bay. Where's the feeling of being adored, for example?

"I need to know a guy's thinking of me all the time," Ackerfeld says.

Is this likely to happen after a hookup?

"Well, no," she admits.

And what about the skills one learns when dating?

"In traditional boyfriend-girlfriend relationships, you begin to understand how someone else thinks about things," says Robert Blum, who chairs the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins University. "You learn to compromise, and not to say the first thing on your mind. You learn how to say you're sorry and accept other people's apologies."