It had been a mistake sleeping with Cathy, Anthony thought. Not that night, of course. His conscience didn’t kick in until the morning after, when the combined effects of vodka shots and intense horniness had worn off.
If she’d been a stranger, it would have been fine, but Cathy worked for one of the company’s suppliers and they’d been flirting for months. Last night he’d run into her. One thing led to another and now, chances were, things would be tricky.
“What’ll I do?” he asked me. “I like her, but I don’t want a girlfriend.”
“Maybe she feels the same,” I suggested.
He shrugged his shoulders and looked unhappy. My line of argument wasn’t very convincing, and frankly, I hadn’t believed the words as they came out of my mouth. With many men the assumption that the love was all heading in one direction would simply be an unchecked ego gone wild; with Ant it seemed realistic. He looks like he’s just popped out of the pages of Esquire and women are always falling for him.
A few days later, he had a change of heart and decided to give the lucky girl a call. Perhaps, he asked, she’d like to meet him for a drink later in the week? Curiously, the idea didn’t appeal to her. Pacing around my living room, Anthony was in shock. He felt rejected and far more upset than I would ever have imagined.
“I feel so used!” he said. “She only wanted me for sex!”
Poor Ant, I’d have given him wine, ice cream and sympathy, but under the circumstances I thought that might have completely emasculated the boy. Turns out it wasn’t necessary anyway. Five minutes later he was back to his old self.
“Shall we go to the pub?” he asked.
Do men ever feel bad after casual sex? Apparently they do. A study by Durham University found that while most men strut like minor sex gods after a one-night stand, 23% regretted it so much that they claimed they wouldn’t want to repeat the experience.
Frankly, I was a little surprised. When choosing casual sexual partners men tend to be less ‘picky’ than women. Indeed, drunk men rarely have any standards at all – at least not until after the fact. Sorry, guys, I mean no disrespect, but most of the studies, the stats and the war stories from my male friends support that statement.
I don’t mean to imply that men will shag anyone, anywhere, any time. Obviously that’s not true, but for the most part, men will shrug off a less than ideal sexual experience, while women – well, around half of us according to Durham University – are more likely to regret a one-night stand and feel ‘used’ or ‘cheap’ afterwards.
I was curious. What kind of sexual experiences – other than cheating on a partner – did men regret? Would I be able to find one who, like the study’s 23%, felt empty and used after casual sex? What happened that made them feel that way – and more importantly, would they tell me about it?
Often it’s not casual sex itself but the casual sex partner that’s the problem. A 2002 study of college students found that the biggest regret most blokes have after a one-night stand is realising that the beer goggles had been firmly in place the night before and they’d ended up in bed with a girl they’d have avoided while sober. Yep, since 1862, beer really has been helping people to get laid who otherwise might find it, um, hard – and presumably mead, poteen and whatever poison you fancy were doing the job before then.
This had been Alan’s experience. After hooking up with a girl at a college party he was shocked when he saw her again in the cold sober light of day. “I felt weird for days, mainly because I thought I had more self control,” he told me.
Damien confessed that on more than one occasion he’d slept with women he didn’t find attractive. Actually that’s putting it much mildly. “I’d have chewed my arm off to get away from her the next morning,” were his words. Call me callous, but I ain’t feeling that sorry for him.
For Ryan, lack of looks was less of a problem than lack of personality. “I regret a number of one night stands I’ve had, generally because the people I slept with weren’t nice human beings. The one thing in common with all of them is I was drunk,” he told me. Did he feel used, I wanted to know. No. “I wouldn’t say I felt used, but I definitely felt I had let myself down by being with someone who I would normally dislike being near – never mind being intimate with them!”
I was having difficulty finding a bloke who would admit to having felt used after casual sex. It seems to be a concept alien to most men. “Used?” asked Mr Humphrey when I put the idea to him. “Why would I care?”
You wouldn’t mind if your partner treated you as nothing but a set of genitals, didn’t care about your sexual enjoyment or was rude to you afterwards, I wanted to know.
“Nope.”
Later that evening after the long-limbed major sex god had compromised my dignity and my sheets, I quizzed James. Like Humph, James thought feeling ‘used’ was just not part of the male sexual experience. No hand wringing, no Catholic guilt, no obsessing – it happened, it was shit, move on!
I was beginning to have my doubts about the whole damn survey. Yes, almost every man I’d asked had at least one sexual experience they’d regretted but not a single one had had a one-night stand that made them feel truly used and certainly not anything so bad that it put them off the idea altogether. Get back in the saddle, was their battle cry.
I thought I might have struck gold when Aaron confessed that, on certain occasions, casual sex had left him feeling less than ecstatic. “There have been times I felt used. It can feel a bit empty,” he said. Woo hoo! Not that I was celebrating Aaron’s sexual misfortunes, but I thought I might have finally found one of the elusive 23%. Then he ruined it all by telling me, “I’ve had good ones and also felt used! I don’t mind that!” Boo.
If Aaron was a disappointment, then Jim was more so. He whipped me into a frenzy of salivating excitement, only to kick me to the curb. The bastard!
“There was this one bird, yeah, who totally used me.”
“Tell me more,” I said, practically rubbing my hands in glee.
“She only saw me when it suited her; wouldn’t go out with my friends; always made me come to her place; wouldn’t answer my calls but phoned me when she was horny; and kept telling me she didn’t want a boyfriend. I felt like a rent boy or something.”
As Jim was talking I felt my ears go red. No wonder he was starting to grin. This story was sounding a little too familiar.
“Oh,” I said, hanging my head in shame. “I’m sorry.”??