Science Explains How to Have Casual Sex Without the Heartaches
Science guides us through the emotional minefield of casual sex
It’s no secret that casual sex can be pretty darn awesome. The benefits of casual sex deserve the near-constant praise they get. It’s exciting. It’s energizing. It helps us step outside our comfort zones.
Who doesn’t love a good adventure?
Casual sex allows you to experiment with different partners, so you can find out what you like to do with your body and who you like to do it with.
You learn about yourself. It’s wonderful.
But there’s a flip side to all this awesomeness.
Some people make the mistake of using casual sex to cover up pain, emotional problems, and lingering trauma that should be addressed. When this happens, casual sex fills a void. We have it with our shields up. We’re guarded, smothering any hope of meaningful connection under a thick blanket of fake smiles and hidden tears.
This is unambiguously bad.
Casual sex doesn’t replace therapy.
Another issue with casual sex is how abruptly it can end. I’m sure most people know that feeling of having a romantic encounter fizzle out when you wanted more. It’s awful. You feel duped. You feel naive — like you misread all the cues. You wonder how you could’ve so artfully messed up.
Unfortunately, we can’t control other people, and we can’t force anyone to stay in our lives, no matter what kind of relationship we have with them.
Considering the possibility things could go either very wrong or very right, the field of casual sex dreams is actually a minefield.
Thankfully, science is here to guide us, showing us how to make our encounters richer and more fulfilling.
Before we proceed, a quick note that sex exists on a spectrum. While 99% of people on that spectrum fit comfortably into two general ranges, we all don’t fit into neat little boxes. You know yourself better than I do.
Use your own judgment to see what applies to you and what doesn’t.
What Tinder Teaches Us
There are vast discrepancies between men and women regarding hookups.
Thankfully, there’s Tinder. Tinder lets us inspect the minds of romantic hopefuls, showing us what they’re thinking. It helps us hammer out the kinks and quirks between the two sexes. It teaches us about our sexual strategies and our motives.
Research shows that on Tinder, 49% of men want casual sex, while only 15% of women do. This means that assuming you’re heterosexual, there’s a vast discrepancy between what you want out of the experience and what your potential partners want.
That’s a huge difference between the sexes.
It’s interesting to note that a minority of both sexes want casual sex, even on Tinder. Most people want a steady relationship. But that doesn’t always preclude something casual.
In my experience, I’ve found that people who have casual sex are usually open to developing something deeper later on. It’s much harder to transition from a long-term relationship to a casual one.
We also differ in terms of strategy. Men are more flexible and women more selective when romance is on the table.
33% of men swipe right on every profile they encounter, sifting through whatever they wind up with. Conversely, 93% of women report only swiping right on a person they’re explicitly attracted to.
Another study examined the data from 3,600 Tinder users and discovered that men swiped right on over 60% of the profiles they encountered. Women swiped right on 4% of the profiles they encountered.
Evolutionary psychology confirmed: women are way more selective than men.
Who Enjoys Casual Sex?
Who truly enjoys casual sex? Seriously. I’d be lying if I told you there weren’t various times in my life when I wondered if anyone out there enjoyed it at all. This was usually right after a casual encounter left me feeling empty inside.
The above differences between men and women with respect to casual encounters are primarily differences in strategy. But there are some differences in enjoyment, too. Men are much more likely to enjoy casual sex, and women are much more likely to experience sexual shame and regret afterward.
Take note, guys: making women feel valued, autonomous, and appreciated means more and better sex for everyone.
Women are much more likely to enjoy partnered sex than casual sex. You might think this has to do with some biological mechanism that makes women “romantic” and men relentlessly sexual hounds. If this is your suspicion, I hate to break it to you, but it’s off-base.
Two factors we don’t always think about are our degree of autonomy and our sociosexual orientation. Thankfully, we have a deeper understanding of sexuality than we did in the 1990s.
Sociosexuality
Women, men, and everyone in between have varying degrees of sociosexuality, which is their openness to having casual sex, multiple partners, and their belief that sex isn’t necessarily tied to a relationship.
Women who have a higher degree of sociosexuality enjoy casual sex more than women who don’t. The same goes for men.
Autonomy
A 2019 study by John Townsend, Peter Jonason, and Timothy Wasserman published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that our motives for casual sex play a role in how much we enjoy it or not.
What researchers uncovered highlights the importance of enthusiastic, affirmed consent in sexual encounters, no matter how casual.
In sex, there are autonomous and non-autonomous motives.
Autonomous motives are things like pleasure, connection, desire, freedom, self-exploration, expanding our personal limits, and more. It’s when we have sex for our own reasons, and the locus of control is internal.
Non-autonomous sex is the opposite. It’s when we feel like we must have sex to please someone, to avoid negative consequences, because it’s expected of us, or because we think that’s what we’re supposed to do. With non-autonomous sex, we might say we want the sex—but we really don’t want it, at least not for our own reasons.
In other words, “I guess so” isn’t likely to lead to gratifying sex. If someone is pressured after that point, they’re going to have a bad time. This is true for everyone unless that’s your consensually-agreed-upon kink.
Mitigating Harm & Enjoying Encounters
Regardless of your sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity, there are some steps everyone can take to ensure that people have enjoyable encounters.
Surprisingly, people want romance during casual flings.
This makes sense. A 2014 study found that romantic connection is undeniably the most common element in sexual fantasies, regardless of sex, gender, or sexual orientation.
A 2017 study published by Cambridge University Press found that while people in long-term relationships wanted romantic encounters more often, the difference was negligible. People having casual hookups want romance, too.
A lot of people think “casual” is just a synonym for “emotionless.” But people who enjoy casual sex want to experience the rich variety of emotions everyone else does. To them, “casual” means “commitment-free,” not devoid of emotion.
People also want oral sex. But the sexes aren’t equal on this. It’s pertinent that you give oral sex if you’re a man. It’s how you’ll make sure your partner walks away smiling. For women, it can make the encounter less enjoyable.
A 2016 study by Jessica Wood et al. at the University of Guelph found the sexes are equivalent in their enjoyment of receiving oral sex (70%). No surprise there.
When it came to giving, 52% of men enjoyed it very much, 41% enjoyed it somewhat, and 7% didn’t enjoy it. Only 28% of the women enjoyed giving oral sex, 55% enjoyed it somewhat, and 17% didn’t like it at all.
This divergence is more prominent the more casual the sex is.
Takeaways
Casual sex can be a nightmare or a treat. How we go about it makes a huge difference in how enjoyable it will be.
Our ability to enjoy casual sex is partially shaped by our beliefs. If we think it must be devoid of emotion, it’ll be less enjoyable or even bad. If we understand the term casual to mean we’re explicitly not getting into exclusive commitments or commitments of long-term emotional or financial responsibility, we can just sit back and enjoy the sex.
We all want romance, regardless of the relationship duration. Embrace it. You’ll be happier. There’s no law that says that only committed relationships can be romantic.
Make sure all parties are acting autonomously. Openly discuss what you want out of the encounter so everyone’s on the same page. The reasons should be pleasure, enjoyment, etc., not guilt, pressure, or coercion.
Oral sex is crucial, and most people want it out of an encounter. If you want to be a superstar, give with no expectation of receiving. Sex isn’t a tit-for-tat, it’s an experience to be enjoyed.
Thank you for this article. It really goes a long way in explaining casual sex and what people want out of it. It put into words exactly how I feel, especially the bit about 'not wanting commitment doesn't mean you don't want emotion' - this is where so many people get it wrong and then that leads to the feelings of being duped. Well written, well put. Thank you.
Great article. One thing that I would have liked covered is the stigma when women are in or continue to have casual relationships. How do men truly feel towards a woman who is in casual relationships and would they consider that woman for a long term relationship?