When it comes to regrets, there’s nothing like a failed romance to reveal the emotional gulf between the sexes. For while it seems a man can walk away from a relationship with barely a second thought, his lover may worry for years about what she did wrong.
More than twice as many women as men in a study said they had made mistakes with ex-partners - 44 percent compared to 20 percent.
Relationship expert Jean Hannah Edelstein said it showed women felt they were “more responsible for the emotional side of the relationship”.
“Women are more inclined to look inwardly to identify reasons why a relationship broke down than men. They’re also more likely to think they were to blame and will ask themselves, ‘What could I have done differently?’
“Men, if they ask those questions, would be something like, ‘What was their problem?.
“Too few men admit to regret because they think it is unmasculine, but honest reflection after a relationship can never be a bad thing.”
The telephone survey asked 370 adults aged between 19 and 103 what they considered their biggest single regret to be.
The most common disappointment was romance, with nearly one in five of those questioned saddened that a relationship hadn’ t worked. Not surprisingly, perhaps, single women were most likely to regret the one that got away.
In second place were family problems, with 16 percent wishing they had not argued with loved ones.
A sense of failure over education came third (13 percent), followed by regrets over careers (12 percent), money problems (10 percent) and parenting errors (nine percent).
The study, published in the journal Social Psychological & Personality Science, was carried out by American researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago.
Lead author Professor Neil Roese said that although regret might be upsetting, it could be a good thing.
He added: “There are ways regret feels bad, but on average regret is a helpful emotion. The most helpful way to experience regret is to feel it deeply, get over it quickly and move on and use it to push you to new behaviours that are going to be helpful.
“The longer-ago regrets tend to focus on lost opportunities, things you could have done or should have done different. More recent regrets tend to focus on things you did do that you wish you could take back.”
Even though the study reinforces the idea that women mourn failed relationships and reflect on their failures while men appear ready to move on without looking back straight away, earlier research found that
more than 20 percent of married women said that if they could go back in time they would change their husband, compared with 12 percent of married men. – Daily Mail