When interviewed at or after middle age, both men and women have expressed some profound sexual regrets. But, researchers say, what they regret shows how great gender differences can be.
It is as you might expect: Women regret sexual experiences they had—one-night stands, or sex with the wrong person, while men regret sexual experiences they missed --opportunities passed up, or not attempted.
According to Marty Haselton, professor of social psychology at UCLA, “When men miss a sexual opportunity it may be a costly loss from an evolutionary perspective.”
Researchers at The University of Texas agree: “Men are genetically hardwired to seek mates and on some level each missed opportunity to have sex is a missed opportunity to reproduce.
But for women, who invest more in each offspring—pregnancy, breastfeeding, infant care—“the consequences of casual sex are much higher which is likely to have shaped women's emotional reactions to sexual liaisons even today”, according to the findings reported in The Archives of Sexual Behavior.
So then, here we are in CancerLand and we wonder about regrets here. Do we, should we make an extra special effort to have more sex and keep our sexual lives, well, alive? Or should we acknowledge that being alive (beating cancer) is the ultimate prize, and go have a great chocolate cake and some champagne?
Does a cancer diagnosis, and surviving cancer (and its treatments), change our regrets, or make us wish for—and still try for—more sex?
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