In the March issue of Psychology Today, there are two pieces that I wanted to discuss here. One is a short snippet on kissing. Interestingly, a study published in Evolutionary Psychology found that far more men than women would have sex with someone without kissing that person first (53% of men versus 14% of women). Would you have sex without kissing them first? (I know I wouldn’t. Well, for the most part :) )

Another interesting finding from a study published in Western Journal of Communication found that couples who increased their kissing time (variable unknown- how long did couples increase their kissing time to?) experienced lower stress over time. The piece mentions that “just 15 minutes worth of kissing…can reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol”- but I don’t know if that is 15 minutes per week or what. (J and I have been joking that it must be 15 minutes a day! Go get it!)

Another, longer piece discussed casual sex and hook-ups, and recent studies indicating that many young people who have casual sex later regret it. Gender-based differences were found in these studies: in “a collection of studies in the Archives of Sexual Behavior… [demonstrated that] On average, women most regretted the sex that they had; men were more likely to regret the sex they didn’t.” Women tended to be more regretful of losing their virginity to the “wrong person” while men tended to regret not being more “sexually intrepid.”

Have you ever regretted a casual sex encounter? Why? What happened?

I think this gets into a larger question about regret and the meaning of sex. If you learned something, do you necessarily need to regret it? Is your regret based on the meaning you ascribe to sex? What do you all think?