"Sex Without Intimacy" Article

I recently read an interesting article on NPR's website entitled "Sex without Intimacy: No Dating, No Relationships" by Brenda Wilson and it really related to a lot of what was going on in the lives of many of my 20-something friends. Here is the link to the article:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105008712

The article describes the "hook-up", which can mean anything from sex, to heavy petting to simply making out. For most 20-somethings, the hook-up has replaced dating, and replaced courtship. I remember thinking during college that no one really asked anyone on a date anymore, and that most relationships I knew of revolved around some sort of inebriated rendez-vous, without first really getting to know the person. Contrary to the dating habits of the past, young adults are now focusing more on their careers and place less emphasis on finding a marriage partner until after they have pursued their other goals. As a woman, I am grateful that my worth as a young female is not based on whether or not I have "landed" a man anymore, and that I can pursue academic and career dreams without very much societal hindrance. As a theologian, however, I see the trend in physical union without intimacy as very disturbing and detrimental to the spirit.

I long to find the time to read John Paul II's Theology of the Body, but from what I have researched about sexual morality, I know that the central message of sexuality for Christians is that you cannot separate your body from your soul (Gnosticism believes that you can). What you do with your body affects you, and if you give of yourself to someone physically, although society can lead you to believe that is just fun and casual, sex can never be casual. For most of my female friends who are sexually active, whether they believe in God or not, they can agree that when you are involved with someone physically, emotional attachment inevitably follows. This is natural, and what is so unnatural to me is the ever-prevalent message that it's really no big deal, that you can indeed have sex without intimacy. Seems so much like an oxy-moron.

The paragraph of the article that stood out to me reads, "Today, Wilkerson says people hook up via the Internet and text messaging. 'What that means is that you have contact with many, many more people, but each of those relationships takes up a little bit less of your life. That fragmentation of the social world creates a lot of loneliness.'"

Writing love letters to someone, or even going to pick them up from their house and taking them on a date takes time. If meeting the opposite sex consists of having a lot of different text relationships or even dating online with many different potentials, are we really getting to know anyone in the process, or just fragmenting our lives so that we have a lot of options, but very little depth? I wonder sometimes if all of the different forms of communication have stunted our relationship capabilities.