Men And Women Have Different Regrets About Sex

In an ideal world, no one would regret informed, consensual choices in sexual behavior, but scientists at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of California at Los Angeles say that men and women are hard wired for the emotion of regret when it comes to sex, although not in the same way.

Women, the psychological researchers say, tend to regret losing their virginity to the wrong man. Or they regret making a relationship sexual too fast. Or they regret cheating on their partners.

Men, on the other hand, tend to regret not having sex with more people, being more sexually adventurous in their youth, or being too timid to approach a particular object of conquest.

Why Men and Women Have Different Kinds of Regrets About Sex

Dr. Martie Haselton, a UCLA professor of social psychology who co-authored the study, says that the Differing attitudes on sex are part of out make up that has helped the human race survive and grow. Males have an evolutionary drive to father as many babies as possible, an important factor in the maintenance of our species, Haselton says. Women, on the other hand, have an evolutionary drive to protect individual babies. Men make sure babies are conceived, women make sure babies are born.

The Reason for the Double Sexual Standard

Lead study author Dr. Andrew Galperin says that the double standard for sexual behavior in our culture, it's OK for men to play around, but women need to be virgins or at least possess a suitable reputation when they couple, is part of the reason for the differences in how men and women feel about sex. The double standard might account for the reason a woman is more likely to feel regrets about who they choose to have their "first time" with. But the University of California and University of Texas researchers believe something more primal is at work when it comes to men's and women's long-term views of sex.

Read More: Top Reasons for Low Libido: Sex Drive Killers

• Inaction is more likely to be regretted than action. Doing the wrong thing that works out OK is easier for people to live with than doing nothing. (The social science researchers make this statement descriptively rather than prescriptively, that is, the fact that human beings tend to regret inaction more than wrong action is not a justification to go out and do something stupid.)

• High-quality sex, that is, intensely enjoyable sex, is less likely to be regretted than low-quality sex. Even if some aspects of the relationship are "wrong," good sex tends to make the relationship "right," from the perspective of how human minds work. Bad sex tends to cancel out of desirable attributes of the relationship.

• Men and women tend to have the same patterns of regrets in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships, although this is difficult to explain in terms of evolutionary biology.

How Men And Women Choose Their Sexual Partners

We didn't need the research of Dr. Galperin and Dr. Haselton to tell us that men tend to pursue hot sex and women tend to pursue stable relationships. But what else can social psychology tell us about how men and women differ in the ways they choose their sexual partners--before they have a chance to look back in either satisfaction or regret?

Men, the social psychologists tell us:

• Agree to casual sex after consideration of the potential of the partner to provide sexual satisfaction.

• Agree to casual sex more often than women.

Women, on the other hand, psychologists tell us, are:

• Agree to casual sex after consideration of the potential of the partner to provide sexual satisfaction.

• Agree to casual sex less often than men.

If both men and women naturally agree to casual sex on the basis of their assessment of how much they will enjoy it, why do women agree less often than men? After all, if the researchers surveyed enough people to include a fair sampling of various kinds of moral attitudes on sex and various kinds of physical attractiveness, shouldn't men and women be about equally likely to engage in casual sex?

It's not enough for a man to be "hot." He must also not give off signals that he is a cad. (Women also consider personality in lesbian relationships, of course.) On the other hand, men usually don't consider personality in their sexual relationships with either women or other men. Women prefer relationship. Men prefer one night stands.

"I find you to be very attractive." 

Pick up lines, whether slick or lame, also have different effects on men and women. Explicit pick up lines are the most likely to get the desired results in men, sometimes after the man recovers from his initial shock. Explicit lines are likely to be totally ignored by women (although a famous study in Austria found that 6.1% of women are receptive to an offer of immediate sexual satisfaction from an attractive stranger, in this study, an attractive man). In most cases, rejection of a suitor results in the suitor moving on. But there are exceptions:

• The protest response, in which the person seeking sex complains that he or she really is desirable.

• Frustration attraction, in which someone who has been rejected becomes even more attracted to the person who did the rejecting.

• Abandonment rage, an expression of a psychiatric disorder in which rejection leads to anger and/or violence.

• Mate guarding, in which one of the sexual partners is not willing for a relationship to remain casual.

Read More: Painful Sex: Causes and Treatment

Both men and women can express these reactions to sexual rejection, although they fall into different behavior patterns, men more overt, women more covert. But the best way to avoid the complications of having to reject a sexual suitor is not to be in a place where these propositions are received.