The complications of liberation.

This weekend I found myself at a wedding attended by many people I know well. I can say that I have been to enough weddings over the past several years to identify the various patterns you see emerge. It’s eerily cosmic the way a goofy glow befalls everyone, spats and tiffs between friends and lovers are minimized, and even if you really can’t stand either the bride or groom, you find yourself tearing up when they say their “I do’s.” One of many such patterns you see is the almost-planned interplay between the single bridesmaids and the single groomsmen. Such was the cliché case this weekend. The only bridesmaid was from out of town, serendipitously single, and admittedly recently divorced. She brandished a thick southern accent that she played up to a “T” and shamelessly flirted with the various groomsmen vying for her attention. It was quite entertaining. And as you could imagine, after two full days of getting to know everyone, and after much alcohol and “love in the air,” she hooked up with a lucky fella. The dramady was a topic of conversation the following day between A and I, and he explained that wedding hookups happen because girls get emotional at weddings. Hold the phone. Dear A, I said, hook ups have nothing to do with emotion, for the guy or the girl. Us girls are as devoid of emotion during a random tryst as any man. With perplexion he asks, “well, why do you insist on being emotional when we….” Sigh. I feel bad for him and all men who are trying to learn our “rules.” In reality, it doesn’t make any sense. Kudos for him for listening to me and accepting that girls need emotional closeness for intimacy, but is our feminist liberalism confusing them like the RCA dog? How do you explain that, for the most part, random sex is emotionally devoid until it occurs enough times that you require an emotional connection? Why is it easier to hop into the sack with a perfect stranger than it is to be intimate with the man you’re slightly annoyed with? For all our liberation and social evolution, have we simply succeeded in moving further away from getting emotional intimacy? In a weird series of “yes, but….” sentences I attempted to explain this A, and although he attempted to look mildly interested, I’m sure he chalked it up to “women are confusing” and left it at that. And as for the bridesmaid and groomsman, I’m sure living in different parts of the country eliminates potential further “complications.”