When last night's 'Brad Pitt' looks more like Mr Bean

Shocking story at Britain's newspaper The Daily Mail: (racy topic, be warned)

Casual sex left me feeling worthless: How a one-night stand left one woman emotionally destroyed

(Racy photo. Be warned again. This is a British newspaper, after all.)

Some scholar in the article asserts that 58% of women regret having one-night stands. One of the women interviewed went so far as to start practicing celibacy after a one-night stand. The article has a number of good one-liners, and it's hard to pick a favorite:

I actually think that sleeping with lots of Mr Wrongs puts up a barrier to finding Mr Right.

When last night's 'Brad Pitt' looks more like Mr Bean, a woman's self-respect plummets.

I lost count of the number of women who came to me the next morning sobbing about how used they felt, and the fact their one-night stand wouldn't even give them their telephone number.

One of the women interviewed states that she has never had a one-night stand:

What do you gain from that as a woman? Sex is such an intimate encounter, and you are prepared to give everything of yourself to a stranger?

(I like best that she implies the oft-ignored link between physical intimacy and emotional intimacy.)

One of the women interviewed does think one-night stands are just dandy, the ultimate in women's liberation, because women have the privilege of acting like men. I won't comment, but I do feel a little insulted at the subtle implication that all men act this way.

You might wonder why I called the article "shocking". There's nothing unusual about a survey where women report regretting their one-night stands. From what I've read, inebriation tends to increase both the frequency of this encounter and the subsequent regret.

I call the article shocking because the same Psychology professor who reports that 58% of women regret their one-night stands also reports that 23% of men regret their one-night stands. I'd have been amazed if even 1 out of every 10 expressed regret; here they're saying the number is 1 out of 4.

If I don't talk about things like this with my daughters, I will surely be guilty of gross negligence. I've already been trying to impose my Puritanical moralities on such matters my son—not just on physical intimacy, mind, but on things like honesty with money, too. I have a vague memory of a discussion on this topic. I'd better talk to him about it again, but he's 11 years old, so up until now I've just let him bring it up first. Reading the (American) papers, maybe I should be more proactive.

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*Looking around the website a little, I am reminded of how that British newspapers are quite interesting. Rumor, innuendo, salacity: so that's where Fox News gets its ideas.