Sexual Regret - The Psychology of Romantic Remorse,,Click

When asked to describe one memorable regret in their lives, a recent large survey found the most common qualm amongst a nationally representative poll of North Americans, involved ''romance''. This covered love, sex, dating or marriage.
Romantic remorse includes divorce, marrying the ''wrong person,'' an affair, not pursuing
someone special, casual sex with the wrong partner, losing one's virginity too early or too late. Women were more likely than men to describe a romantic regret.

Source: Raj Persaud

These findings have now inspired a team of psychologists to conduct the largest and most in-depth study to date on sexual regret. The team was led by Professor Martie Haselton, and the research was conducted through her lab at UCLA, with Andrew Galperin as lead author, and including co-authors David Buss and Gian Gonzaga, amongst other colleagues.
The authors of the study, published in the academic journal 'Archives of Sexual Behaviour', were particularly interested in whether men and women would experience substantially different sexual regrets, reflecting fundamental contrasts between men's and women's romantic experiences.
The investigation was based on evolutionary theory - that sexual drives evolved to pass on our genes as much as possible to future generations. This - some proponents of the theory argue - becomes a primary biological imperative - driving our sex lives - but perhaps often below conscious awareness.
Our brains evolved to cope with survival in ancient environments, so modern day sexual strategy, the contention is, remains an echo of how our ancestors played the game of love. Each time an ancestral man had sex with a different fertile partner he could potentially produce new offspring. But adding more sex partners for ancestral women did not increase their child production, as it did for men.
These ancient sexual strategies do not yield the same reproductive advantages in the modern world, where - for example, contraception is commonly used - but it seems our 'neanderthal' brains continue to guide behaviour to this day.
Evolutionary theory therefore predicts women will evolve a different sexual strategy to men, emphasising quality over quantity. Previous surveys confirm women remain much more selective than men in choosing sleeping partners, whereas men are more open than women to casual sex, desiring more numerous sexual liaisons.

Source: Raj Persaud

One of the unique aspects of this study, in our opinion, is that it tackles the problem that in the arena of erotic encounters, those taking part in research surveys are not always entirely honest. Asking instead what you mourn in your romantic career, may be an innovative and more accurate way of illuminating our normally secret sex lives.
by Raj Persaud and Adrian Furnham