Meaningful Casual Sex, One Night Stands: Their Emotions and Psychology
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2021-03-17

Presentation to the 2nd International Webinar on Psychology and Psychiatry, March 2021

Casual sex is a continuum: from pornography, to cybersex and sexting, one night stands, to casual sex, like FWB (Friends with Benefits). The spectrum runs from the impersonal to the personal and from the merely visual to a total experience.

One night stand and casual sex satisfaction very low and participants insist that it is emotionless, meaningless/meant nothing, and the partner is a nobody. They compare it to masturbating with another’s body (autoerotic empathy through the other’s gaze, L. Rangelovska): animated sex doll or dildo.

But it is easy to prove that this is false: casual sex is anything but casual, it is narrative intended to resolve multiple dissonances triggered by the lack of subsequent bonding. It is a rupture of the typical sexual script even when both parties are fully aware and consensual.

(1) Intimate partners (who had experienced casual sex first hand) react with jealousy and breakup when their mates have one night stands: they consider it to be a significant deal breaker; 

(2) Some of these encounters evolve into relationships. Had casual sex been totally emotionless and meaningless, this would have never happened;

(3) Participants report negative or positive emotions after the sex: shame, guilt, and anger (mostly among women or following substance abuse), satisfaction, pride, and elevated self-esteem (among men and also among women with personality disorders). This signifies that the sex was a meaningful experience that triggered an emotional cascade;

(4)  Sex: initial info exchanged, hormonal cascade, long-term memories (hippocampus);

(5) Use of alcohol and drugs to alter the perceptions of the potential partner’s attractiveness, to enhance intimacy (via ritual), and disinhibit (overcome socialization) proves that casual sex is a momentous event that requires a massive effort and investment and an alteration of the personality and its scripts;

(6) Casual sex involves trust (physical and emotional), a sense of safety (hence beta preference), suspending defenses, and exposing vulnerabilities. These are some of the most profound and transformational emotional experiences (also common in love and in therapy);

Sex is a drive/urge, so opportunity driven: even unattractive partners with incompatible smells and offputting behavior (such as stinginess/being cheap, pushy, vulgar, aggressive) are game.

Casual sex is a part of mate selection: a test drive. Many attempt to convert it to some type of relationship (friends with benefits, or even a romantic one).

Intimacy in casual sex involves: attentiveness, kindness/succor, passion (irresistibility), directness/honesty, matching expectations, leadership, good time/fun, affection, compassion, comfort, non-judgmental/non-critical, equality.

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