“Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection,” writes Brené Brown, a University of Houston researcher whose work focuses on the need for vulnerability and what happens when we desensitize ourselves to it.

Given the way members of Generation Y have been conditioned, their seemingly blithe attitude about marriage, perhaps even about love, may become less of a boon and more of a bust.

It’s no wonder, really, that many millennials are in this predicament, often at no fault of their own. Their lifelong associations with love are a familiar soundtrack: Since early childhood their ears have been subjected to thumping messages in the popular culture that sex confers social cachet and, more than anything else, belongs front and center in their identities. (Helloooo, Sex Week!)

Then there’s the familiar lyrics from their parents — rants about why grades, internships and anything else that makes their résumés appear more extraordinary trump romantic relationships. And the constant bass line of social media, which, let’s face it, trivializes the complexity of romantic relationships. (One study out of the University of Missouri found that people in romantic relationships of three years or less who use Facebook more than once an hour are more likely to experience relational corrosion, including infidelity.)

But wait a minute. Don’t we naturally become more emotionally mature by the time we’re ready to settle down in our 30s? Not as much anymore. Research led by the social psychologist Sara H. Konrath at the University of Michigan has shown that college students’ self-described levels of empathy have declined since 1980, especially so in the past 10 years, as quantifiable levels of self-esteem and narcissism have skyrocketed. Add to this the hypercompetitive reflex that hooking up triggers (the peer pressure to take part in the hookup culture and then to be first to unhook) and the noncommittal mind-set that hanging out breeds. The result is a generation that’s terrified of and clueless about the A B C’s of romantic intimacy.