From a psychological perspective since the beginning we have based our desires of procreation on biological attributes. The way our bodies do this is through external stimulus. Since you cannot see inside this is the only way for your body to find 'good genes.' However, as time progressed, humans began to live longer and develop society, language, and culture. With these growths in population and centralized concentrations of peoples we began deciding to live social lives with our mates even going as far as to develop rituals to 'bond' us together so that others could not take from us the future of our gene pool. Furthermore, as monotheistic religion began forming its roots people on a mass scale were told only one mate or God will punish you. After this tumultuous change in culture, individuals began focusing more on the personality of the individual they had their children with because you do not want to choose your one person and they have no morals, no desire to bear children, and would up and leave in the middle of the night. This is ideally when 'inner beauty' screening was begun in society.
Fast forward to now when the mass media is, as you say, desensitizing the public back into the mold of acceptable lust. They know they can make money off of our biological response to flesh. This, when unregulated, then makes it predominant in society and more acceptable on a large scale. When things become more acceptable they are less scolded and shunned and without that negative feedback we have far less inhibition to refrain from those behaviors.
It is by far unfair to say that everyone feels this way. There are many individuals from each society, sex, race, creed, and religion that hold a higher moral for their criteria in a partner. However, the bad thing is as time passes for these people they are going to get 'fucked over' by the people that 'fake' their personality and only want sex. This, in the long term, will break the wills of many people that originally weren't of this school of thought.
In conclusion, we are only reverting back to accept what we have always been. Lustful, sexual creatures yearning for procreation. Rather or not you are of favorable opinion of this is entirely up to you. It will never be back to they way it was before society when it was a purely sex driven goal, however. Because we don't want to go through difficult things alone and we fear having to, most will find a partner to stay with.
This is by far not a comprehensive explanation, however, I do not have the kind of time required to write on the idiosyncratic effects insecurity has on cause and effect in relationships, the biological yearning for spreading genes to as many hosts as possible before around 25 (about the lifespan of a pre-social human), or the narcissistic influence our minds have in thinking we are so amazing that someone should love only us forever. (Where as we live only inside of our brains all day every day we have a personal bias to hold ourselves above others. It's like if you were running for office...you would vote for yourself over others because even if you truly thought the other candidate was better, you would have personal bias for yourself because you have to leave the booth with yourself. Also the spotlight effect comes into play where we basically think people pay more attention to us then the actual number of people that in reality do. If you have a small stain that you know about on your shirt you will think everyone in the world notices it, when only a percentage actually will.)
Despite that I have lived my entire life on the romantic pretense that love exists and monogamy is the idealistic life, I have come to understand that it is in fact against our nature and that in the cases it does happen it is the force of two unassailable wills driving towards the same goal. Because it takes all of that work and time it is difficult and can get old fast. If someone doesn't have the desire to put themselves through that kind of commitment then it cannot work. Without pressure there would be no diamonds...but not all people give a rats ass about diamonds. Some would rather have an equally expensive vacation. The vacation is expendable, but some value expendability over durability.
I feel as though there is much I haven't covered, which now leaves me vulnerable to the malcontent of the following posters. Either way, I have a movie to watch.
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