Wes: “I just don’t want to be in a relationship,” “Let’s not put a label on it,” “Can’t we just keep it casual?” These have become the dating catchphrases of an entire generation of teens and young adults. On the surface, parents might assume today’s kids are just hanging out and remaining friends, leaving more serious commitments and the sex that goes with them, for later in life. That would be about half true. Youth culture is definitely leaving commitment behind, but it isn’t exactly reserving sex for exclusive, monogamous unions. Hooking up started as a trend a decade ago. Today it’s the norm and long-term, committed relationships are to be avoided like salmonella.

It’s a problematic idea. Young people — typically, but not exclusively, men — want all the benefits of a relationship, sex, companionship, and emotional attachment, without the cost of commitment. Young women traditionally pushed back against this asynchronicity, which has of late only served to make young men more uncomfortable. Don’t worry, guys. Any remaining resistance to casual culture is waning, with fewer and fewer teen and young adult women linking sexual expression and obligation.

Double Take columnists Gabe Magee and Dr. Wes Crenshaw

Few would mistake me for an old-fashioned kind of guy. I try hard to judge these trends without being judgy. But this one is vexing for me because it predisposes a whole generation to dispose of each other. So, here’s what I’d propose instead: Let’s forget this dumb idea that any two people can coexist without “being in a relationship,” and accept the fact that every pairing we undertake in life creates a bond that should be treated with a reasonable degree of respect and dignity. Even if you’re just “friends with benefits,” you should first be friends. If you’re randomly hooking up with someone, you’re forming a connection with them, even for a brief moment, and you owe one another a modicum of caring and kindness.

The idea that people can be together but not really be together, that sexual contact should (or can) only be physical, and any deeper meaning should be avoided at all costs, is perhaps the worst idea to come from youth since big hair in the 1980s. Unfortunately, while hair bands are history, I suspect the flight from commitment is here to stay. If so, we need to start teaching our kids what it means to be in a relationship, starting with that understanding that denying its existence doesn’t make it go away.

Gabe: Teens aren’t just now beginning to have casual relationships. They’ve been having them for a long time. But they’re starting to have them in greater numbers. As with real relationships, you have all of the benefits — sex, emotion, connection — without the less desirable parts for youth, commitment and lack of freedom.

Yet, for all but the flingiest of flings, there remains some expectation of exclusivity. It doesn’t even have to be spoken or thought-out, but it certainly exists. For example, if your friend with benefits treats someone else the way they treat you, the relationship changes. “Catching feelings” for someone you’re just messing around with is common, even though people pretend the lack of a stated barrier changes the emotions of both parties.

Why then do teens so fear commitment? Perhaps it’s a function of the openness we see in the rest of our lives. We have the world laid before us, or so we’re told. Why would we want to chain ourselves down to one person? Skirting away from an exclusive relationship allows us to tell ourselves that we have other options. But you cannot expect your casual partner to be as flexible about exclusivity as you are.

In reality, “putting a label on it” is just that, recognizing and naming what already is. It’s similar to the old saying — if it talks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. If you hang out with someone and treat him or her as a significant other, you’re in a relationship. What you call it matters less than how you live it.

— Wes Crenshaw, Ph.D., ABPP, is author of “I Always Want to Be Where I’m Not: Successful Living with ADD & ADHD.” Learn about his writing and practice at dr-wes.com. Gabe Magee is a Bishop Seabury Academy senior. Send your confidential 200-word question to ask@dr-wes.com. Double Take opinions and advice are not a substitute for psychological services.