Women are 'hard-wired' to regret casual flings - but men only regret NOT having them, study reveals



Raising children meant women had to face more consequences of sex

Emotions are still hard-wired despite contraception and modern society



Studies by universities in Texas and Los Angeles quizzed 25,000 people



If you flush with shame at that holiday fling, you're not alone.

Women are genetically hard-wired to regret casual sex with the wrong partner - because of the burden of having children.



But it seems men are much more relaxed - they only regret not having sex at all.

Remorse: Women are more likely to regret casual flings, a study by two American universities has found - because of the consequences of having children. Men only regret missing an opportunity (posed by models) Seduction: Most studies have looked at sexual attraction - instead of feelings of shame the next morning

Researchers quizzed 25,000 people about their sex lives to show regret is part of the way we have evolved.

Three studies by the University of Texas and University of California-Los Angeles found the main regrets for women were losing their virginity to the wrong partner, cheating or moving too fast.

Embarrassment: If you've ever regretted sex the next day, you are not alone (posed by model)

More women (17 per cent) than men (10 per cent) included 'having sex with a physically unattractive partner' as a top regret.

For men, the top regrets were being too timid to approach someone and not being more sexually adventurous when younger or single.

UCLA psychology professor Martie Haselton said: 'For men throughout evolutionary history, every missed opportunity to have sex with a new partner is potentially a missed reproduce opportunity - a costly loss from an evolutionary perspective.

'For women, reproduction required much more investment in each offspring, including nine months of pregnancy and potentially two additional years of breastfeeding.



'The consequences of casual sex were so much higher for women than for men, and this is likely to have shaped emotional reactions to sexual liaisons even today.

'We [now] have reliable methods of contraception, but that doesn't seem to have erased the sex differences in women's and men's responses.'



The findings were published in the academic journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Most of the participants were given a list of common sexual regrets and asked to indicate which ones they had experienced.

The study included straight, gay, lesbian and bisexual men and women.

David Buss, evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas, said: 'Prior sex researchers have focused primarily on the emotion of sexual attraction.



Women are from Venus, men are from Mars: The study found old clichés about sex are often true Morning after: Passion in the bedroom may not leave women happy the next day (posed by models)

'These studies point to the importance of a neglected mating emotion - sexual regret - which feels experientially negative but in fact can be highly functional in guiding adaptive sexual decisions.'

However, regret was not enough to stop women having casual sex.