You're listening to the Water Into Wine podcast, hosted by Grace Valentine.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another edition of the Water Into Wine podcast.

I'm your host, Grace Valentine.

I'm an author.

I'm a friend.

And I am sometimes someone who does this podcast. But it is really exciting for me to be able to talk to y'all and connect with y'all

on a topic that is important to my heart that I think more people need to hear. And I've prayed

about whether to talk about this or not in the podcast because I never want to come off as someone

who shames. And I think this topic, sometimes when people from outside perspectives give this into this topic,

can come off very judgmental. However, I want to talk about hookup culture in our world, especially

in college and in post grad, because I know whether it's through friends, whether it's through my

own past, how normal hookup culture is,

especially when you're in college and you're drinking or in postgrad and you feel really

lonely, singleness sucks, and there's someone who can entertain you or you go back to an ex,

whatever it may be. And so I get how normal it is. And I also get that, you know, as a young woman,

you have hormones. And sometimes in your life, it can feel very freeing to participate in hookup culture because you think, well, I'm not looking at it like it's a relationship. I'm not looking at it like it actually matters. Like, I have a good mindset. And the truth is, I've seen this happen to my friends. I've seen this happens to me in other ways.

But when you participate in hookup culture, I have watched my friends especially just get drained from it. They say that there's no feelings involved. They say that they're empowered

as a woman, that it's woman empowerment with our bodies. But the truth is they always end up

sad and wishing for more. And so granted, I get it. There's probably a lot of

people listening to this podcast who have all different wide ranges of their life. Some of you may be

participating in hookup culture in college. Some of you may be participating in postgrad. But I just

want to remind you what you're worth and that you're worth more because I truly think hookup culture

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