Dating: What's the Point?

I understand the point of ‘dating’ becoming just a ‘practice for divorce’.  With the current ‘hook-up’ culture, short relationships seem to be the new normal.  I think that if a relationship is taken seriously by both parties it does not have to be a quick association.  It depends on the given scenario and those involved.  Most teenagers in 2012 are not looking at ‘dating’ in high school as something that will lead to marriage.  In most cases, couples spilt not because of a real issue in the relationship but because of separating for college.  I agree that in most cases breaking-up before college makes sense so that you have more freedoms however it attributes to the potentially lackadaisical relationships of the day. 

The ‘hook-up’ culture stems from the idea of trying many different things to find what you like.  It is can basically be ‘speed-dating’ without the conversation.  The term ‘hooking-up’ has a different definition to each person and setting.  In conjunction with that, when someone says, “Guess what? [Insert name here] ‘hooked-up’ with [insert 2^nd name here] last weekend!” There is, almost always, the follow-up question of, “What did they do?”  Although popular culture has attempted to put less visual terminology to making-out/oral sex/sexual intercourse/etc. the term still needs to be elaborated on when used in context similar to the aforementioned scenario.