In a world where “Jersey Shore” and “The Real World” are what everyone is talking about around the water cooler, it’s easy to see why the younger generations are more and more bucking traditional relationships for causal hook-ups and one-night stands. It stands to reason that as people put less stock in traditional relationships, sooner or later people will forget about intimacy altogether, but until recently I didn’t think I was truly that cynical.

My cynicism arrived in the form of Alex. Alex’s affectation was worse than any I’d ever seen. He refused – 100 percent refused – to kiss me on the mouth. He’d kiss me on the cheek, on the neck, even on the knees at one point, but getting him to kiss me on the lips was like getting a cat to take a bath.

I finally resigned myself to the fact that it wasn’t going to happen and let him lead the show, but it got me thinking: Have hookups become so impersonal that even the intimacy of kissing has been lost? Is it possible that we as a society have been so desensitized to the idea of relationships and personal connection in the bedroom that sex has become not just impersonal, but all business? You don’t have to be in love to have sex – hell, you don’t even have to know the other person’s name if you don’t want to – but there should at least be a base level of attraction and not just a quota to be filled.

Sex is the most personal act most of us will ever engage in in our lifetimes, aside from possibly donating an organ. Even if it’s only in that moment, you are as close and as intimate as two people can be and allowing yourself to be vulnerable. Alex couldn’t even let his guard down for one night and kiss me.

It’s like in “Pretty Woman” when Julia Roberts, while setting the conditions of her tryst with Richard Gere, tells the man she’ll do anything but kiss him on the mouth, because then it becomes too personal – then it’s not business. Well, Alex and Pauly D, as well as ladies everywhere, it’s time for sex to get personal again, regardless of the hours of operation.