Choice in relationships, and the price people pay

In her incisive book, Choice (2010) Renata Salecl — colleague of redoubtable philosopher and psychoanalytical theorist, Slavoj Zizek, and a formidable thinker in her own right — probes what she calls the “tyranny of choice” in the present era. Everywhere we turn in our capitalist society (which thrives on variety), we are confronted by a bewildering array of things, items, products, services, even short-term sex partners or companions to choose from. On the one hand it is a manifestation of what one may think of as economic and social freedom, but as she shows, it comes at a price.

Instead of trying in vain to do justice to her book in its entirety, I would rather like to concentrate briefly on the ambivalence of what she describes as “love choices”, a topic she introduces with a discussion of the phenomenon of “hooking up” — a “common romantic ritual on US university campuses”. Although “hooking up” means nothing more than a “light attachment” to students, Salecl points out that they may sometimes get more than they bargained for in such a relationship without serious commitment.

“Hooking up” epitomises, for Salecl, what is most conspicuous about dating today, in so far as it observes the principle of steering clear of real intimacy — which is always accompanied by the risk of getting hurt — in favour of what she terms “the mechanics of contact”. This, she argues, is closely connected to the “tyranny of choice”: “This very choice of expression reveals much about the perception of sex and love in the time of tyranny of choice. Enjoyment is no longer about searching for a spouse or a friend, coming close to the chosen object or trying to comprehend or penetrate his or her often unsettling otherness. It is about taking gratification from the process of hooking — enticing, seducing, trapping and then discarding — unhooking — and searching for a new object. This lack of commitment is the new vogue in relationships.”

It is no accident that the word “hook” occurs in several other semantic contexts which carry a range of negative connotations, from being “caught” through deception, to being addicted to a substance that is deleterious for one’s health, and is even inscribed in the word “hooker” (which may bear the traces of pleasure for some, but less so for others). It is this “darker” side of the word’s meaning, Salecl suggests, which may just be activated by the light-hearted, no-commitment-intended meaning that the expression has among especially (but not exclusively) students.

For instance: regardless of the connotation of casual contact, without emotional attachment, that clings to “hooking up”, one sometimes gets emotionally involved despite one’s “best” intentions. And given the norms governing relationships conceived of as casual encounters, such a person is not supposed to admit it to herself or himself, let alone to the person they have developed “feelings” for. Small wonder that, in such cases, it leads to feelings of guilt, anxiety and inadequacy.

Salecl provides a succinct historical overview of the evolution of “courtship” over the last century, remarking on the “loosening up” of the old rules during the sexual revolution of the 1960s (which was accompanied by a strengthening and broadening of the feminist movement, fuelled, in its turn, by the increasing economic independence of women as a result of them joining the workforce during the Second World War). This has led to the present culture of “hooking up”: “’Hook-up” culture is all about choice. We have so many options in every aspect of life that the choice of emotional attachment is not only an added burden but also an impediment to the total freedom we are meant to value. Someone who gets attached too quickly has not fully profited from that freedom.”

The link between “hook-up” culture and the social gains, on the part of women, during the 1960s, is made clear when Salecl points out that it is often justified as a practice which prevents especially women from attaching themselves to a male partner too soon, in this way allowing them to make a better, more informed choice later.

From this perspective, the practice of hooking up is supposed to enable women to behave in the same way that men used to behave, namely, to spend a night randomly with someone, avoiding the investment of feelings, and ignoring any possible emotional consequences. Paradoxically, however, although all of this is done for the sake of “choice and control”, Salecl insists, hook-up culture is inseparable from uncertainty. In spite of supposedly liberating young people from the burden of attachment, it encumbers individuals with something else — “insecurity, anxiety and guilt”.

For Salecl, this explains why hooking up is so often accompanied by the use of alcohol, as a way of passing the buck, instead of accepting responsibility for what may happen between yourself and the other person. It is easy to blame it on alcohol if things don’t work out the way you wanted them to. “Hooking up”, she says, “allows for anonymity, non-commitment and non-responsibility”.

Although Salecl focuses on contemporary relationships among especially college students, what she uncovers resonates with what Allan Bloom (in his book, The Closing of the American Mind) observed as long ago as the late 1980s about students on American campuses. Bloom commented on, and lamented, the fact that students at the time seemed incapable of love, entering into temporary relationships of sexual convenience instead. He was astonished that such students could, after living together in sexual “intimacy” for four or more years, part ways with nothing more than a handshake. It would seem as if the ideal of choice and control in relationships, which Salecl elaborates on in her book, is rooted in the kind of college culture Bloom described in the 1980s.

There is a strange paradox here, between the idea that relationships can be safely controlled by adopting the rules of “hook-up” culture, on the one hand, and the fact — highlighted by Salecl — that stories of tragic romantic love are pervasive in western culture, on the other hand. According to these tales, two people fall in love precisely because they cannot prevent themselves from doing so, and the suffering that ensues is often the result of them not really being suitable for each other as far as their personalities go, despite which they cannot control their mutual passion. What this deeply embedded idea tells us is that love is precisely not a matter of choice, but is interwoven with unconscious desires and fantasies. When hooking up goes seriously wrong — that is, when the attempt to control one’s choices for the sake of preventing precisely such emotionally disastrous involvements, fails — one may just discover why narratives of romantic love beyond choice are so ubiquitous.

Personally I believe that, either way, there is a price to be paid: if one opts for the kind of casual, superficial, short-term relationship of which “hooking up” is paradigmatic, one pays the price of not ever being in the position where one may, if one is fortunate, enjoy the rich rewards of a true love-relationship. Hooking up equals emotional security or self-protection, sans love-fulfilment.

If, on the other hand, one opens oneself to the possibility of romantic love, one risks experiencing tremendous pain, should the love not work out, or last, in the end — something Freud warns against in his work. But unless one takes this risk, you will not be in a position where you may experience the kind of joy and fulfilment that only reciprocal love can bring. Loving thus equals emotional risk and the possibility of fulfilment, sans security.

Moreover, every person may make his or her choice between these two options, but — as Renata Salecl wisely counsels — this choice is not absolute, because we are not omnipotent beings. You may buy into hook-up culture, in the vain belief that your emotional life is insulated from pain, only to fall in love willy-nilly, and having to confront another choice: whether to admit it to yourself and the other person or not to. Or you may choose love, only to discover that you are incapable of really giving or receiving it, try as you may, because of some hidden personality trait on your part, and therefore you end up, willy-nilly, with precisely the kind of emotional insulation that others may strive to attain.