real life

One night stands: a path to low self-esteem for girls?

New research has suggested that women and men are affected very differently by a one-nighter:

Women feel regretful and ‘used’ the morning after a one-night stand,
and worry about damage done to their reputation while men brag to
friends about their sexual exploits.

Only when they
believe there is a chance of forming a long-term relationship do women
risk having sex on a first date.

Professor Anne Campbell of Durham University, who led the research,
said almost half of the women interviewed felt full of regret after a
brief encounter.
Only 54 per cent of women said they had enjoyed the experience. Whilst 80 per cent of men felt happy about it most women said it was less sexually satisfying than they had first thought.

One female respondent said: ‘I generally felt dirty and unhappy.’
Another said: ‘The expectation was better than the reality, the sex was rubbish.’

According to the survey, men’s greatest regret centred on having chosen an unattractive or undesirable partner.

According
to the research, published in the journal Human Nature, women are not
well adapted to casual relationships and instead prefer ‘quality to
quantity’.
‘What the woman seemed to object to was not the
briefness of the encounter but the fact that the man did not seem to
appreciate her,’ said Professor Campbell.

She
said that although women do not rate casual sex positively, the reason
they still take part in it might be due to the menstrual cycle changes
influencing their sexual motivation.  During the ovulatory
phase, between days ten and 18 of their cycle, women report increased
sexual desire and arousal, with a preference for short-term partners.

I don’t know too many women who can have ‘sex like a man’, without strings or regrets. To me, it’s not a moral issue, more about protecting yourself. For some women, the intimacy of sleeping with someone can confuse how you really feel about them and I know too many women who have falsely believed they were ‘in love’ when in fact, they just felt vulnerable and needy after having sex with someone they didn’t know very well.

Whenever I talk about this, I often get an angry woman telling me I’m a disgrace for implying that all women want a relationship and that men only want sex. I’m not saying that. There are no hard and fast stereotypes. It’s just more common for women to get emotionally involved after they’ve gotten naked with someone…..

Think about all the people you’ve slept with. How many do you wish you hadn’t? Or wish you’d waited?