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Men and women reveal their sexual regrets

BY: FROM: DAILY MAIL 6 HOURS AGODECEMBER 10, 2013 3:33PM

Regrets: Hav e y ou had a f ew? Source: Supplied

REGRETS: Don't we all have a few? But when it comes to those of the sexual variety, it seems their number and nature very much depends on your gender. An academic study of more than 25,000 people recently revealed that while women are more likely to regret engaging in casual sexual encounters - with more than half fretting they had moved too quickly to the bedroom - men are far more likely to lament failing to bed more partners. So are men really hard-wired to regret not sowing more wild oats and women to regret reaping them? With remarkable honesty, writer Linda Kelsey, 61, and her partner of five years, osteopath Ron Marx, 59, have shared their sexual journeys - and the lessons they learned from them - with The Daily Mail. LINDA SAYS: After just a couple of dates, I should never have agreed to go to Paris for the weekend with the barrister. It was already clear we had little in common, but he was handsome, had a great physique and I was in the mood for adventure. As a single woman in my late 20s there was nothing to stop me. The sexual revolution and several years working in the heady atmosphere of Cosmopolitan magazine, where sex was a daily topic for discussion, gave me licence to do exactly as I pleased. But two nights of perfunctory sex and two days of listless conversation confirmed for me (and, undoubtedly, for him) that this relationship was going nowhere. To be with a lover in Paris, that most romantic of cities, and wishing I was home alone in my London flat, reminded me not for the first time - that casual sex was something to which I was constitutionally unsuited. I simply couldn't get turned on by a man I didn't much like, however good-looking he was. Without that emotional connection sex seemed

pointless at best, and demeaning at worst. Instead of curling up together after making love (if you can call it that), we each retreated to the very edges of the bed, total strangers in the night. I've clocked up around a dozen sexual liaisons, which isn't a great deal by today's standards, but neither is it paltry if you consider I was married for six years from the age of 19, having had just one prior sexual relationship. I then got together with the man who became the father of my child when I was 32, and whom I married 15 years later. We remained absolutely faithful for 23 years until we split when I was in my mid-50s. What I realised in the six-year gap between ending marriage No. 1 and embarking upon a 23-year relationship was just how easy it would have been to fall into bed with almost every man I went out with. But my experience in Paris, the final episode in a short series of equally desultory encounters with men I barely knew, confirmed that casual sex, however tantalising a prospect in the heat of the moment, would lead me down a slippery slope that would rob me of my self-respect and leave me feeling tainted rather than satisfied. I had flirted with permissiveness, but now it was certain: I had no desire to divorce sex from a relationship. Monogamy was what worked for me. During those potentially promiscuous years between marriages I took much greater pleasure in two longish-term relationships which, despite not lasting the distance, were emotionally - and consequently sexually - satisfying. My negative response to casual sex was, in part, influenced by the sexual double standard of the time. Even in the socalled sexually- liberated Sixties and Seventies it endowed men with respect for getting as many women as possible into bed, while labelling girls who did likewise as loose. It's a sexual double standard that seems even more prevalent today. There is increasing evidence that girls - sexualised at an ever younger age by the fashion and music industries - are having more sex with less consideration as to whether or not they are getting pleasure from it, on the basis that they have to do it to fit in socially. Meanwhile, as the lyrics to so many popular rap songs constantly remind them, girls who give their sexual services freely are regarded by men as useful sex toys who have little value as human beings. Now that most women don't settle down until 30-plus, the possibility of drifting casually from one sexual encounter to another seems damagingly limitless, unless you have the maturity to apply your sexual brakes. I thank goodness that my Parisian encounter encouraged me to step heavily on mine. Even after the end of my second marriage, the thought of becoming a 'silver vixen' - indulging in meaningless sexual encounters as so many newly single women of my age do - filled with me such horror that I wondered if I might be better off on my own. Post-separation, I felt I had no need to make up for lost sexual opportunities in my youth. Those six years between my late 20s and early 30s had given me rich and varied sexual experience enough, and, much more valuably, had taught me that the sexual confidence that had waned along with my second marriage would not be revitalised by any number of casual affairs. I was lucky. I was introduced to Ron at the party of a mutual friend, and although it was many months before we bumped into one another again and began dating (and another three months after that before we went to bed), we've been happily together ever since. My sexual confidence has been restored, but, more important, I feel both loved and loving again. Where I may differ from those women surveyed is that I don't regret any of the partners I had because I learned something very important from each of them - that casual sex, for me is as unsatisfying as eating 0 per cent-fat yoghurt: it doesn't sate your craving and leaves a nasty after-taste. But I would never have known what I am not missing out on unless I'd tried it. RON SAYS:

Not long ago, I ran into a woman I hadn't seen for 35 years. We had known each other vaguely as teenagers at school, and she told me that she kept her distance from me back then because I was 'this arrogant, good-looking guy' who appeared to think myself out of her league. Stunned, I thought: 'Why is she telling me this now, 35 years too late?' I was, in fact, always very shy around girls and never considered myself especially attractive. Yet, according to her, I could have had my pick of women. Of course, even if I had known that, I doubt I would have done. From very early on in my adolescence I believed that far from sowing wild oats, I ought seek out a girl to be a future wife and mother to my children. Looking back, I realised that I had grown up believing I should follow faithfully in my parents' footsteps. They married in their early 20s without either having had any previous sexual experience and stuck together through thick and very thin until my dad's death 40 years later. They never lectured me on what a relationship should look like, but I still emulated what I knew. I wasn't quite as inexperienced as my father when he married, but neither had I had any casual relationships. After losing my virginity at 16 to a girlfriend the same age, I stayed faithful to her until I was 20 - even though I spent most of that time living abroad with my family and we saw each other only a couple of times a year. All around me were beautiful and available girls, but I closed myself down to temptation. When that relationship ended I had a year-long love affair with another girl. Shortly after, when I was 22, I met the woman who I went on to marry five years later at the age of 27. Throughout those years there was a nagging voice - both at the back of my mind and directly from my peers - telling me that I was not really living 'the life'. It seemed that all other men of my age were having non-stop sex. Deep down, despite my non risk-taking nature, I was jealous of those with the courage to explore more sexually. The morning after my wedding day I remember two distinct emotions - both of which I'm ashamed of. The first: 'Oh my God! What have I done! No way back, this is for ever.' But this was soon overridden by the second: supreme relief that the search was over. The ring on my finger was my sanctuary, keeping me safe and secure in my comfort zone, free from further sexual risks and rejection. I was married to my wife, with whom I had two daughters, for more than 25 years. For me, marriage was for life. My wife, however, had other thoughts. After all those years I found myself rejected, after all, by the woman I had expected to get old with. I thought my life was over. Who on earth would want me now, at 49? Although I was desperate to mend my broken ego, I had no idea how to play the game again. I was rescued from my despair by a woman 16 years my junior, who taught me the joys of loving sex without strings. Although we both knew it would not be a life-long affair, I surprised myself by enjoying guilt-free fun for over a year. It was this romance that freed me to enjoy casual and not-so-casual sex for the first time in my life. There were a couple of one-night stands with women I met on the internet. I even cheated on one within a few days because she overwhelmed me with her emotional neediness. I was behaving like a bit of a scoundrel, but while it would have shocked my younger self, my escapades didn't keep me awake at night - they made me feel, I confess, like more of a man. Because instead of life ending when my wife left as I thought it would, it became vital, energetic and (finally) filled with enough sexual partners to count on more than two hands. I was finally enjoying, in my 50s, the sex life I wish I'd had the confidence to experience when I was younger. My long-married friends looked at me with some envy - I still live off that male kudos now - but the truth is that I was only doing what they had been doing in their teens and 20s.

I can understand why most men's biggest sexual regret is not having more sex, with more women, while they could. For, although my promiscuous period came post-marriage (rather than pre-), getting it out of my system, yet bringing the confidence and experience borne of it with me, has made my 'for ever' relationship with Linda all the richer. Long may it lust. ###

SOURCE: http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/men-and-women-reveal-their-sexual-regrets/story-fnet0gt3-1226779869834