Ester, a 28-year-old master’s student, used to have one night stands but now she picks up a pizza on the way home instead. She gets to spend more of the night with her friends, sleeps better, is more likely to take her makeup off, and less likely to suffer from hangover anxiety. Her view — that one night stands are “time-consuming and unfulfilling” — is becoming increasingly common. A recent study by dating app Match.com found that only eight per cent of those interviewed admitted to having a one night stand.
While a similar survey from matchmaking site Plenty of Fish found that over half (51 per cent) of singles think one night stands are a thing of the past, with men more likely to agree with this idea (61 per cent v 45 per cent of women). You see this reflected all over social media. On TikTok, videos about one-night-stands-gone-wrong have been going viral for months. Despite the promise of a “hot vax summer” last year, we’ve become significantly more restrained.
It’s also less common to see one night stands on TV and, when you do, the couple tends to end up in a relationship. Such is the case in BBC Three’s Starstruck when Jessie’s (Rose Matafeo) one night stand with famous actor Tom (Nikesh Patel) causes a delicious will they/ won’t they dilemma.
This idea — that more can and should be made of transient physical encounters — is also explored in new Channel 4 show One Night Stand? which sends two one-night lovers on a date to see if romance could be kindled.
Even in pop: for the most part, love songs now tend to focus on jilted romance and broken hearts. Tai’Aysha does sing on her new track (One Night Ting), which features Saweetie about “cutting all ties” and “no strings” but as she told People magazine earlier this month, she’s “never actually had a one-night stand”.
But why the collective dry spell?
Ester says she never really enjoyed one night stands in the first place. She tells me about the last one (two years ago) where she ignored a number of red flags. “We had no physical chemistry and hadn’t touched at all until we were literally in bed together,” she explains. “He had a cool job so I just kept going along with it. The sex was so bad I had to stop it halfway through and say ‘this just isn’t working for me’. I think there was this conception that it’s liberating, but for me it isn’t… I find it stressful.”
According to Lala — a former social worker and the anonymous owner of the wildly popular sex advice Instagram page @LalalaLetMeExplain — Ester is not in the minority. She says a number of her followers are turning away from hook-up culture. “Women are wising up to the fact that a one night stand is not likely to result in much pleasure for many of us, sadly because of the curse of heterosexuality: if you’re a man going into most sexual encounters, regardless of how good or bad, you’re probably going to come. Whereas for women, there’s much, much less chance of that happening. It’s not worth the risk. ”
In Lala’s upcoming book It’s Not You, It’s Them there’s even a chapter called “is he worth disturbing your PH for?” which begins with a woman sleeping with a guy. The sex isn’t amazing, he doesn’t call, she ends up with a UTI.
“Sexual liberation is great and we can make those choices to sleep with people without feeling like we’ve done something terrible…But at the same time, there is so much to consider for women. We could get pregnant, we probably will get thrush, we might get BV, we might get herpes. When you consider all of that — is it really worth this one night of possibly-not-very-good pleasure?”
Of course, it’s not just women who are rejecting hook-up culture. Dr Helen Fisher, senior research fellow at The Kinsey Institute and chief science adviser to Match.com, says “stability is the new sexy” for millennials. She cites research from Match.com that suggests two out of three singles want to wait until after the third date before having sex, while 81 per cent of men said they thought sex was less important now than they did before the pandemic.
According to Fisher, one night stands are less likely now because we’re far more dedicated to finding the right person. “Singles are focused on finding someone who’s fully employed, has a financially stable income, a similar level of education. Somebody who has a successful career, not just a job. Millennials are a very square generation compared to mine [Fisher is a Babyboomer] — which is neither good nor bad, you’re just dedicated. You want to get it right. You’re going to take your time at it.”
We had no physical chemistry and hadn’t touched at all until we were literally in bed together
Fisher says this “slow love” approach to relationships has replaced the “free love” of previous generations. “[Millennials] don’t want to ‘catch feelings’,” she says. “To have a one night stand that turns into something when they’re not ready… So by not having their one night stands, they’re choosing to not get into something that’s far more complicated.”
Pranil Raja who works in engineering, has an attitude towards relationships that echoes Fisher’s findings. “I’m only really interested in long term situations,” he says. “That’s kind of the way I like to do things. I’m not really a party animal.”
Pranil is one of the millennials Fisher describes craving security. “Everything to me is centred around logic and order, straightforwardness. There can’t really be much room for doubt or ambiguity and that’s what I find one night stands bring about. I would rather have a small handful of quality relationships and encounters than something quite spur of the moment.”
It’s not hard to think of reasons why this generation might seek stability. We’ve lived through two financial crashes. The planet is burning in front of our eyes. We cannot buy houses so end up moving to and from rental homes at the whim of landlords who can end the tenancy at any time. And then there is Covid-19, which upended our lives.
Fisher emphasises that the pandemic did not cause “slow love” but it certainly fed our enthusiasm for it. “Being locked up for almost two years gives you a lot of time to think about what you want in life. And also, you notice a lot of what you don’t have in life. Millennials are a serious generation. They were serious before the pandemic. And the pandemic just made it even clearer to them.” According to Fisher, we come out of the crisis having gone through “post-traumatic growth” where we think “I don’t want the bad boy, bad girl anymore. I want something solid: a real companion.” The one night stand just doesn’t fit with what we want.
Hannah, a 30-year-old assistant, says she always found one night stands “draining” and “pointless”, but also that lockdowns have had “this roll on effect where the thought of going home with someone feels like an even more foreign prospect… The other day someone tried to give me a high five in the gym area and I was like ‘no thank you’, whereas before I would just be absolutely fine. I don’t even know if I would kiss a stranger now. It seems kind of germy in ways it didn’t before. I’d think: Where have you been?”
Pregnancy, STDs - when you consider all of that, is one night of not-very-good pleasure really worth it?
Covid has made us so aware of how vulnerable our bodies are. But there are other dangers causing people, especially women, to be more cautious about one night stands. “Women now are so aware of how inherent misogyny is in our society and how it impacts the way men treat us” Lala tells me. “We’re seeing all these reports about women being attacked — from the police who are supposedly the ones protecting us.”
Lala references the police watchdog investigation that uncovered WhatsApp exchanges between Met officers joking about rape and domestic abuse. “It’s made women so much more conscious of our own safety when it comes to inviting someone to our house.”
“I just wouldn’t feel safe going back to a man’s house nowadays if I’d just met him in a bar,” Ester says. “At least if you match first on an app you can stalk their LinkedIn or whatever to get a bit more of a sense of who they are.”
It’s a shame the one night stand hasn’t found a way to be more enjoyable for so many of us. That sexual liberation has failed to improve the sex women are having. That women don’t feel safe enough to indulge in them. That our worlds are so chaotic we cannot face bringing any more chaos into them by choice. “I wish I liked them!” said Hannah at the beginning of our conversation. “They do sound like fun.”
