Ep. #68 The Psychological Well-being of Casual Sex with Zhana Vrangalova, PhD

[Angel Donovan]: "The Casual Sex Project" what is that about and how did it come about?

[Zhana Vrangalova]: "The Casual Sex Project" is a website that I created for people to post their hook up stories; their actual real stories of one-night-stands, friends-with-benefits, fuck-buddies, whatever sex they're having in the context of not a romantic long-term committed relationship.

The reason for it was because we as a society have a very ambivalent relationship with casual sex. On the one-hand, it seems to be everywhere around us and everyone seems to be having it but, on the other hand, we're being told it's bad, it's wrong, we shouldn't be doing it, it's unhealthy.

Yet, there's very little actual discourse about what it is, what it looks like, a lot of people don't really have first-hand experience or experience that their friends are having. I thought it would be an interesting and valuable contribution to create a site where people can share these experiences.

I think there's value in both people "writing these stories" and for those who are reading the stories.

[Angel Donovan]: I love that kind of stuff. How long has it been going and how successful has it been in terms of how many posts or how many stories have you got up so far?

[Zhana Vrangalova]: It's been going since April 2014, so a few months. We had about 750 stories at this point. In the beginning, it was one or two stories a day but, then when the media got a hold of the project, it went viral and went all over the world. Media in all continents covered that story and so, we got 500,000 views a month and people just started sending in a lot of stories.

It's been really interesting to see because, most of the time, the discourse on casual sex is that something that college students do and no one else does it. This project allowed for people all ages and races and sociodemographic status all over the world submit stories. We literally have stories from people who are in their forties and fifties and even sixties or seventies.

They come from all over the world, people who are not just heterosexual, gay guys and lesbian women and trans-women and men and queer people, all sorts of demographics.

[Angel Donovan]: That's great to get the variety. Just to the audience, if you have any casual sex stories please go to "The Casual Sex Project". We'll put the links in the show notes and everything. http://thecasualsexproject.com.

Put down your experiences and put down the truth because it's really helpful, insightful for everyone to read it and it's all anonymous so, you've got nothing to hide. It's just interesting and it's good for research.

What kind of research can you do based on this? Are you worried about how truthful people are in their posting?

[Zhana Vrangalova]: Yes, obviously there's no way for me to police that and know whether people are telling the truth or not but I really hope they are because there are other places to post fantasy. The value of this is that these are real stories with all the good, the bad and the ugly that happens. Some of the stories are great but, not everything is great.

There are always things that are awkward or complicated and so, really the value of it is to show that complexity and the ambivalence that often can happen in these stories. When you writing down a fantasy, it is one thing but, writing down a real experience can really help you make sense of that experience.

Especially with experiences that are not all just, "this is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me", but if there is some ambivalence or some negativity, then writing it down really helps you work through it and learn from it. Also for people reading it, it really helps.

I've gotten a lot of feedback in the last few months of people saying that this has been really amazing being able to read all these stories and learn from other people's mistakes and also the good things that people have done. Figure out my own relationship to casual sex or make sense of some of my own experiences through the lens of other people's.

So, I really hope that people are being truthful.

[Angel Donovan]: I'm sure because it take a little bit of effort. This questionnaire isn't super short. I should think that most people don't want to waste their time. There are probably a few people who think they are jokers and they're going to submit anonymous crap.

[Zhana Vrangalova]: My sense is that most of the stories are true because, it's not just one blank kind of text box where they can just write a whole fantasy story. There are a number of questions that people have to answer about themselves, who they are, where they're from and also very specific questions about the hook-up that happened.

These are questions are mostly taken from research studies on casual sex, studies that I have done and other people have done. It's taking what researchers do on this topic in a more confined way and putting it up there on the web for anyone to see and participate.

It's not exactly a research study. This is a crowd-source project but, I am hoping that I can do some research with it in the future because, there's so much data at this point, 750 stories and counting. You can definitely do some analyses and see where the stories are coming from, obviously, the demographic characteristics of the people posting but, also try to make some connections.

How often is alcohol used? How often do people use condoms or how often are these cheating stories and then the relationship between these things.

[Angel Donovan]: I think it's interesting comparing it with other research standpoint to see. Potentially, you could weed out people who have been submitting crap stories but, also, you're relying in your research on surveys as well and in a research setting, you can get biases.

In fact, I know in a marketing area because, I studied it at business school that they actually factor in biases because over time, they've had so much data for fifty years. Now they can tell, if you say you're going to do something, there's a 50% chance that you're going to do it. So, they factor that in now and several response and stuff.

Obviously, in this area, there's not as much information and it's harder to track people's activities. It might be interesting to see the differences you can pull out between what people say on here and what people say on research and you can expand ideas for what you should be looking for in research and maybe controlling for and things like that.

I think it could be a lot of interesting things. I've read a bunch of women's stories. It fits a lot what I've seen and it kind of rang true for me. I didn't see anything that doesn't fit with the kind of things that we've spoken about on the show and what we've seen.

So, I encourage anyone who is listening to read through some of the stories because you'll probably get a lot. I like some of the questions you asked about guilt or like negative that people have felt afterwards. I think that can be eye-opening for a lot of guys.

If they're reading through a girl's story and it could be something where they say, "I've done something like that similar with a girl and I thought she had a great time." Then you read some of the impacts the next day or whenever it was or some of the thing she was thinking, it might give them a different perspective and open their eyes a bit.

[Zhana Vrangalova]: Absolutely because, hook ups are often with people you don't know very well, they don't last very long, you may be drunk or mostly drunk. So, communication isn't stellar between the partners so often people just assume certain things about the other person that's not at all what's happening in the other person's head but it's not actually communicated.

It's nice to read these stories and say, "She was actually not enjoying it."

[Angel Donovan]: It's really cool that you're doing that. Just one for, I don't know if it would be helpful but, if you could use some kind of Facebook validation. Tinder is using Facebook to validate people to make it safer. It can be anonymous but you know that they're a real person. Maybe that will help your research quality. I don't know if that would be difficult to do?

[Zhana Vrangalova]: I've been thinking about what the next step is but, that's one option. It still has to be anonymous because for a lot of people, that's really important.

[Angel Donovan]: I just meant as a log in, kind of like the Tinder because, you're still anonymous on Tinder aside from your first name but you can take that out anyway.

I'd like to get to know you a little bit. We've had a bunch of scientists on lately. We've had Andrea Kuszewski, a neuroscientist. We've had Jeffery Miller; he's an evolutionary psychologist. Where do you fit into the world of science on dating, sex and relationships?

[Zhana Vrangalova]: My PhD has been developmental psychology from Cornell University. That means that my focus has been on development over the life span. I've particularly looked at adolescence and young-adult but, my specific topic within this developmental psychology perspective has been on sexuality. Sexual development and how sexuality in various expressions of it is connected to well-being.

I call myself a sex-researcher and a developmental psychologist. So, you can take your pick.

[Angel Donovan]: We're still trying to figure out what the map is of what areas of science that look at this area and I'm not even sure that academia knows where it will end up. It's not like there's one map which say, "All of these guys look a little bit of sexuality and dating behaviors and attraction."

[Zhana Vrangalova]: Sexuality is such a multi-disciplinary area that you have people who fall into many other more general scientific areas or disciplines that they might focus on sex from that perspective. Social personality psychologist can look at sex, so can evolutionary psychologist, so can cognitive psychologists.

All these different areas of psychology and also other areas like sociology and pathology, history and all that, I think all of those have something to say and something different perhaps to say to people interested in sex and dating.

[Angel Donovan]: Are there any particular areas that you can relate to and not relate to within the scientific establishment or is it kind of like give or take different studies and it's just saying, "That fits what we see, some of it doesn't."

[Zhana Vrangalova]: What do you mean?

[Angel Donovan]: You're coming at it from different perspectives, like the evolutionary psychology versus the technical research where they're doing MRI's of people having orgasm and different things. I can imagine that sometimes some of the papers that are coming out conflict with each other because you're coming at it from a different base of information and different perspective. I was just wondering if there are any areas that you tend to connect to more with and others that you connect with less?

[Zhana Vrangalova]: I think all of these areas have something contribute to a general knowledge of sexuality and dating and relationships. I don't think anyone perspective has a monopoly in truth.

Often times, even if we are trying to understand the same thing, we're coming to it from different perspectives and we're asking different questions that are at different levels of understanding of that same phenomena. So I think all of those are contributing and have a piece of the puzzle. I'm not one of those people who says that, "It's all evolution or it's all biology or it's all social learning."

I think all of those things play a role so, I totally identify and subscribe to a lot of evolutionary psychology has studied and found out but, also social and cultural influences and more biological or the neuroscience people or the hormone and behavior people. I think all of those things have something to contribute.

[Angel Donovan]: Well said.

[Zhana Vrangalova]: We're a complicated species. The answers to all of these behavioral questions and our desires or the things that drive us, it's all going to be complicated. There's never going to be a single simple answer.

[Angel Donovan]: Human beings are incredible. They're like a work of art that maybe we'll never understand, just biologically all the billions of stuff going on all the time. It's amazing that we have coherent behaviors at all.

Would like to get you a bit better also. Could you let us know how old you are, where you are living, what's your current dating relationship lifestyle like.

[Zhana Vrangalova]: I am 32 and I live Brooklyn, New York City. I am originally from Macedonia which is this small country in Southeast Europe, just north of Greece. I came to the US to do my PhD at Cornell about eight years ago but, I have stayed here and I'm not going back permanently. I actually became a citizen last month.

[Angel Donovan]: Congratulations.

[Zhana Vrangalova]: Thank you. So, I guess I'm here to stay for a while. I now teach human sexuality at New York University. I write and do other things as well.

What else do you want to know. My dating life? I'm married to a man. It's important to note because I could be married to a woman.

[Angel Donovan]: Of course. How long have you been married?

[Zhana Vrangalova]: For four years, I think.

[Angel Donovan]: It must have been a very busy four years because time flies.

[Zhana Vrangalova]: It's been a very busy four years. And that's all I'm going to tell you about my private dating life.

[Angel Donovan]: Excellent. Let's move on to what casual sex is exactly and why we have it. For people at home, so they can understand what it is and what it isn't because, when you're looking at this area, you define some stuff as casual sex and when I was reading for the research and the posts that you have, I said, "Oh that's interesting the way that you approach it and say that some aspects are casual sex." Some people might not consider them so, how do you look at casual sex?

[Zhana Vrangalova]: That's a good question and I don't think everyone agrees on the answer and that's fine. The way that I define casual sex is in a fairly broad way that any sexual experience and that can mean anything from kissing and making out to full on intercourse or a bunch of kinky fetishistic behaviors. Any kind of sexual interaction between two or more people who are not in a committed long term romantic relationship and by committed, I don't necessarily mean monogamous but, where there's an established understanding that "we are a couple, we're dating and we're going to try to make it work long term."

So, that's a fairly broad definition. A lot of researchers have defined it in much narrower ways. For example, one night stands have been captured or sex with people you have just met recently. Also, often it has been defined only at the level of intercourse or only if oral sex or more happened.

There are many gray areas but, I think no one will argue, that a one night stand with someone you just met and you had intercourse, that that's casual. I actually see it on a continuum of how well you know your partner and how emotionally connected and how romantically committed you are to them.

That clear-cut case of a one night stand with someone that you just met at the bar an hour ago would be on one end of that continuum or one extreme and sex with someone who you've known for fifteen years and who you've been married for twelve is on the other end of the continuum. I think somewhere in the middle would be the "friends with benefits" category.

Where you're having sex with someone who's a friend, who you've known for a while so you have some shared history and background. You may have some feelings for them, even if they're not romantic but you have some emotional connection with them. That kind of gray area, some people has considered friends with benefits a separate category. That's is not exactly casual, that's not exactly romantic but, it kind of fits into the casual realm because of the lack of that sense that, "we're a couple and we're romantically involved." I'm ok if people disagree on that one.

[Angel Donovan]: This runs into a topic that we've had a few times lately. We've been talking about on line dating and Tinder. Obviously they're kind of hot topics, especially with the Tinder.

My experience on Tinder is that it tends to be pretty casual. Dating sites like Match.com and Chemistry are a bit more serious and people are looking for that long-term thing.

The way that this gives you access to more casual relationships and casual sex. It's like casual relationships that you can meet someone tomorrow pretty easily through Tinder or even today. You can hit it off and you can never see them again potentially after that.

It wasn't quite as easy before that. Maybe you'd meet someone in the bar or something like that but, it's a bit more unusual. Now, it seems like Tinder is making it more acceptable but it depends on the country.

I'm in south of Spain. I don't think that they really use it the same way here.

It seems like casual sex is kind of growing in acceptance. That's kind of one trend because of the online thing and the access is making it easier.

The other thing that we've spoken about before on the pod cast is that people tend to date casually for a while before they get involved in a relationship, before they have that moment where they say, "This is an exclusive relationship."

You'll be maybe dating a few people for a while. It's only when that moment when you say, "Actually, I'm not interested in these other people so, I'm going to stop seeing them and now, I'm just going to focus on this one person."

Before, it didn't seem to be so much of this multi-dating. The period of multi-dating isn't what everyone did. People kept it kind of less numerous, less fragmented when they were dating to look for someone serious. What do you think about those two trends and is that something that you've seen in any research on in terms how casual sex is evolving and how you look at it.

[Zhana Vrangalova]: Yes, there's been a fair amount of research. Unfortunately, you don't have too much research about what was happening 20 years ago or more. In the past, we don't have as much research on that in general but, casual sex in particular was something that we started on studying in a more focused way in the last 15, 20 years.

There are some indications of trends and such and there's no doubt that attitudes have become more liberal in that sense. It's become more and more acceptable.

30 years ago, the majority of people believed that the only acceptable way to have sex was once you were married to someone. Now, the vast majority, especially among young people, if you ask 20 year-olds or 18-25 year-olds whether premarital sex is acceptable and almost 90% of them will say that it is.

Most young people will also say that sex with someone that you are in a romantic committed relationship with is acceptable, regardless of your engagement or married status. Casual sex did not achieved that level of acceptability and I don't even know if it's ever going to happen but, right now what we see is a great variety of attitudes towards casual sex.

There are many people who are accepting of it. There are many people who are not all accepting of it and probably even more people who are somewhere in the middle.

Whenever we ask that question, "How acceptable do you think casual sex is?", the mean is usually somewhere in the middle of that scale. It hovers around the mid-point of the scale which indicates that there is this variability with most people thinking, "In certain circumstances it might be ok. In certain circumstances, it might not be."

There are fewer people saying, "It's cool. No problem." Also, fewer people saying, "No absolutely not."

It is thought more acceptable today than it was 20 years ago or 50 years ago and that trend might continue at least among young people to increase to some extent but, that also depends on what happens. We in some way have a similar trend happening during the sexual revolution when sexuality all of sudden became more acceptable and casual sex at that time was becoming more acceptable, something akin to what is happening today.

[Angel Donovan]: Are you talking about the 70's?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yeah, the 60's and the 70's and then all of a sudden, AIDS happened. Things moved back in a more conservative direction and casual sex became less acceptable because of that. A lot of sociologist and historians agreed that the AIDS scare had a very important role to play in that going back to more conservative values.

Now, we are moving again in the opposite direction but, something might happen again, something like the AIDS scare that will stop that process or reverse that process.

[Angel Donovan]: That's interesting for me because, I grew up with the advertisements on TV about AIDS in my early teens or whenever it was and I remember all these ads. My generation was the most marked by it because, just a few years before we became sexually active, we were getting all this programming about sex is dangerous and all these precaution you had to take.

Of course, that hasn't been taking place. There aren't any ads on TV for quite a while now because, all these kids now that have grown up without the exposure to AIDS. They see a bit on the news but not that much. It's kind of hidden these days.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Not that much, these days, it's not as deadly as it was as when you were growing up. At that time, becoming HIV positive was a very quick death-sentence.

These days it's not. These days it's like having diabetes or other chronic disease that can be fairly easily management at least in the west where we have access to therapies. That scare is not as accurate. There's no need for you to be as scared as if it was a deadly disease. It's still a disease and hopefully, you don't want to get it but, if you do, that doesn't mean that you are going to die within a couple years.

[Angel Donovan]: I just like to say something because, I only learned about this very recently. You must know about this but, I didn't know that if you unprotected sex, you have a 24 hour window to get to the doctors and get some antiviral and even if you were exposed, you have a chance of avoiding the problem if you get it that quick enough.

Have you seen that? I have only read about it recently. I didn't know it was a possibility.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes, that's been around from many years now. The window period is actually 72 hours and it's called Post Exposure Prophylactic, PEP. It's some kind of combination of anti-retroviral therapy that people who are already infected are given but in a different combination, it can actually prevent the virus from taken hold in your body.

Another thing that has become available very recently is Pre-Exposure Prophylactic. I don't know if you guys have talked about that on your show.

[Angel Donovan]:No.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:People who are at very high risk of getting HIV, people who have sex with a lot of people, for example, but are not very good about using condoms or people who are in a relationship with someone who has HIV. That kind of high-risk individual can actually go on this Pre-Exposure Prophylactic.

It's actually one pill that you take once a day every day and it decreases your risk of getting HIV by 99%.

[Angel Donovan]:Just to be clear, this is not 100%. So, don't run around exposing yourself.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:It's not 100% but, it can be better than condoms if you are taking every day.

[Angel Donovan]:It's better than condoms, you say?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes.

[Angel Donovan]:That's pretty cool. Does it have any side-effects?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:They say that they are fairly minor. We don't have long-term studies so, we don't know if within 20 years if you have some side-effects but, the short-term side-effects don't seem to be very serious.

If you happen to be in that high risk group, do take a look at PREP and see if that might be something to look into for yourself.

[Angel Donovan]:I was amazed to see how AIDS research really has advanced. My feeling was that it was a bit like cancer. They weren't getting anywhere. They were just trudging because, it's not in the news.

I haven't heard about this in the news at all. It was just something I happened to Google and found on the internet. They really should beef up their marketing budgets.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes, they didn't want to market it too much. Sex is quite controversial here in the US. A lot of people are saying that if you offer this to everyone then, people are going to stop using condoms all together and then you're going to have huge outbreaks of other sexually transmitted infections.

The PREP does not protect you from syphilis and gonorrhea and that kind of stuff. It's getting people to have bad risky behaviors. It's a big debate and I'm sure we can solve it here.

[Angel Donovan]: We can't do it justice in five minutes.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:There are pros and cons to that argument. The other people are saying, "But these are already people who are not using condoms. So, this way we can protect them from HIV if not from other things. It's a complex issue.

[Angel Donovan]:I am always shocked at the number of guys, because I talk to more guys about this topic than anything else, who don't use condoms.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Me too! Actually the Casual Sex Project has been surprising in that way, the number of stories that people share where condoms were not used. It's actually quite astonishing.

To me it's very surprising. These are people that you don't know, that you just met or even someone you do but you're not exclusive with.

[Angel Donovan]:I heard one of my buddies recently said, "I was with this girl for weeks so, we decided to do it with a condom." Obviously, nothing has changed.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:A week?

[Angel Donovan]:You feel emotionally more comfortable, it's strange to say it that way but, I understand what he is saying. When I've been with someone for a couple months, we have been tested, you feel very comfortable with each other and you don't feel like that person could kill you. It's just the way it is.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:It's a false sense of safety and security but, it's very common. Even in longer term relationships, that's what happens. People stop using condoms the minute they start feeling comfortable with this person as opposed to actually going and getting tested which is the way that it should be but, most often it isn't.

[Angel Donovan]:It's like a bulletin alert and a side-step. If you're in a relationship, get tested before you start going without a condom.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Absolutely.

[Angel Donovan]:That was a nice little side-step. Thank you very much for covering that. I am glad that you knew quite bit about it. It's nice to get this kind of information out there. I was surprised.

Back to casual sex. Who's having casual sex? Do you have demographics and other information about how it varies according to age, gender, geography and so on?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:A lot of people are having it. It's certainly most common among young people.

[Angel Donovan]:What is young? Are we talking under 25> Under 30? What is young?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:The 18 to 25 demographic is usually the one that studied the most. Among of that demographic, the majority of people have had at least on casual encounter. That's what is usually asked, "Have you ever had this experience?"

Of something they're asked is about their most recent sexual experience, "What kind of partner was that with?" Different cities define it differently so, it's not always easy to compare between studies.

Not all teenagers are having sex obviously but, among those that are having sex, the majority has experienced a casual situation at least once.

[Angel Donovan]:That's interesting so, the teenagers are having more casual sex than relationship sex or am I putting words in your mouth here?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:I wouldn't say they're more casual sex but, they have experienced casual sex as well relationship sex. That's one thing that I often get asked, "Is casual sex replacing dating," and I don't think we have the evidence to suggest that.

What seems to be happening is people are having relationships but, they're also having casual sex. So, it's not replacing, it's kind of supplementing relationship sex.

[Angel Donovan]:Are you saying that these are affairs? Is this cheating or is this polyamory. I don't know you'd count polyamory and multiple dating in there? What kind of context are we talking about here?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:I wouldn't count polyamory in casual sex because polyamory is all about having long-term multiple relationships but open relationships where you're allowed to have sex with someone else. I would certainly count that.

When I say that casual sex is supplementing relationship sex, that could be because people in romantic relationship are having open relationships or swinging type relationships because people are cheating or it's something that they do in between relationships, before or after. Any one of those situations could count but, we're certainly seeing both.

There's no decrease in the number of people who say, for example, there was a recent study that came out on a nationally representative sample of 18-25 year olds and asked them, "Have you had sex with a relationship partner in the last year?" The vast majority said yes. That was the same number that had yes compared to 15 years ago.

There were more people who said that they had also in the last year had sex with a friend or an acquaintance compared to people 15 years ago.

[Angel Donovan]:It's like it's growing amongst social context? It's becoming more common to have sex with people you hang out with? People who are friends are basically people you hang out with. It could be with people at college in a group of friends or social contacts but, people you know versus going to a night club and meeting someone you've never seen in your life and going home with them and then afterwards never seeing them again?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes, the most common category of a casual partner, if you will, is a friend. The prototypical one night stand with someone you have never met before is actually the rarest form of casual sex.

Usually the people that you have this casual sex with are someone that is in your group of friends or maybe a more distant acquaintance. It's someone that you, first of all know for at least some amount of time. It's more than a week or so. The average is actually a few months at least for young people.

The vast majority of people have had more than one sexual encounter with each casual partner that they have. So, the one night stand is not that common.

[Angel Donovan]:That's interesting.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes, the prototype of casual sex that we all have in our heads, the one night stand with a stranger but, that just doesn't make up a large percentage of sex that people are having. I might have two one night stand but, if I have two friends with benefits who I've had sex with many times. Then, I've had a lot more casual sex with these two friends than the two nights than the two one night stands.

[Angel Donovan]:Right.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:That's just a lot more common. It's not surprising. If sex was good with someone, then, you would want to repeat it. A lot more people feel more comfortable having sex with someone that they know or have known for a while rather than someone they just met an hour again.

[Angel Donovan]:I think it's a positive thing. It's encouraging. The worst-case scenario, the one that the media looks at that stereotype, is that it's implied that if you get too drunk and you go home with someone you're not interested in, you have sex and then you're kind of guilty and that's why you leave each other in the morning or preferably in the evening and you never see each other again.

It's actually encouraging that it's not happening as much as the stereotype says and rather these are, people who are probably interested in each other a little bit for a while and then one night, they hook up.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:They actually like each other. They respect each other. They have some shared history together of some sort. In that sense, it's encouraging.

I don't necessarily think that there's anything wrong with going to a club, meeting someone and going home but, if you take out the getting drunk part and going home with someone that you wouldn't have normally gone home with.

[Angel Donovan]:I don't know if you know about this, but I used to talk about this. I used to go to clubs a lot and with my buddies the next day, I would talk about "happy goggles," because I never drank.

[Zhana Vrangalova]: "Happy goggles"?

[Angel Donovan]:Yes because I didn't have the excuse of alcohol because I quit drinking years before but, I would go out and I would just run around the club, having a great time, sometimes go home with a girl and sometimes regret it the next day. No alcohol was involved.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Why did you regret it?

[Angel Donovan]:Because I figured that if I hadn't been in that mood, I maybe wouldn't have done it. It sort of felt awkward in the morning and it was just kind of those situations when I say, "I don't know if that was one of the best decisions." I got on to this thing of "happy goggles."

Sometimes when I'm in a really good mood, I would have pushed things further than if I wasn't in a good mood because, when you're stimulated in the club, you're having a lot of fun. I actually wondered how much of it was alcohol and how much of it was just kind of the environment and the context of it.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Definitely, the environment contributes to that. There's no doubt and the mood. It's not just the alcohol and research shows that. People are a lot more likely to hook up when say, they're on vacation.

The environment is such that they're in this good mood. They feel like this is the place where things like this happen or even if they are at a bar or club and they're not drinking.

You are more likely to be thinking of hooking up in an environment in which that is expecting than say, if you were going to the coffee shop or going to the library. That's not where you go to pick up people. That's where you go to do something else but, when you go to a bar or a club or on vacation, that's part of the experience, you are more likely to think about that and more likely to spend energy in that direction.

What my research has shown recently is that whether it ends up being a good experience or a bad experience depends on is this something that you really wanted to do? Are you doing this for the right reasons?

That could be being a good mood and wanting to hook up. There's nothing wrong with. There's something wrong with that if that's not what you really wanted to do.

Is this who you really are? Is this part of your sense of self and desires? Are you someone who likes to go and see someone that you find attractive and go home and have sex even if you never see them again? Are you ok with that? Are your attitudes and desires in line with that kind of behavior?

My research shows that when this behavior is in fact in line with your habits and desires, your well-being is more likely to be increased after that experience, whereas, if this is something that you didn't really want to do or you were doing it for the wrong reasons.

You were doing because you were peer pressured into it because everyone else is doing it or because you were hoping that it would lead to something more, that it wouldn't be just casual sex or if you got drunk or because you were trying to please your partner but you really weren't into it.

If you did it for these wrong reasons, then your well-being suffered.

[Angel Donovan]:Let's take one step back and talk about what well-being is because, I want the guys to understand how this is effecting them and get a practical feeling for it. When you're measuring well-being, what are the kinds of things that you are looking at it? What does it mean? How is it going to be good or negative.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:What I measured in my studies is things like self-esteem, life-satisfaction, anxiety, depression, any of those complaints. Some people have looked at just how positive or negative that the hook-up experience was evaluated as but, I actually look at these more stable or long-term kind of well-being indicators that are not directly related to the evaluation of the experience.

In some studies, you might be asked, "Tell us about your most recent hook-up. How positive was it? How negative? How much you regret it."

I'm more interested in how you feel about yourself and how you evaluate your life in general and try to see whether or not your casual sex experience is in different types of casual sex experiences influences your more stable evaluations of yourself and your life.

[Angel Donovan]:Is the way you look at what you're doing having a negative impact on your well-being? Is it a negative hit each time? It's like taking your self-esteem lower so you can potentially be less confident in dating scenarios as time goes on and maybe other scenarios as well? Would it spill out to that? These big questions can't be answered?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:I don't think we have an answer to that yet. It's hard to know. We don't quite have the data in a way that would allow us to answer.

Is there sort of "does dependent effect" that each negative experience adds more to decreases in well-being or whether it requires a certain threshold? If you had five bad experiences, on the fifth one, you get a decrease.

We don't quite know that but, I think it makes sense that the more negative experiences we have, the more and more difficult it is to discount them in some other way. If you have one negative experience, you say, "That was just a stupid mistake" or "The guy was a jerk," or "The girl was whatever," but it's a pattern if it happens more often.

You become more likely to say, "Maybe there's something wrong with me," or "What I'm doing", as opposed to what the other person is doing or what the situation was.

If you're having a lot of casual sex and most of that is a negative experience then, you're probably doing something wrong and you should stop. Whereas if you're having a lot of casual sex and every now and then there's a negative experience but, most of them are fairly positive then, probably you're doing something right and you should be ok to continue.

[Angel Donovan]:There's way to identify what could be wrong. You're saying in some cases you don't feel good about. It sounds like you can judge it on how you're feeling afterwards. You say, "I don't feel good about this experience."

The big thing here is to take notice of that and if you're feeling that, try to identify what it is. What kind of reasons have you found for it not being good for well-being? You mentioned a few of them but, is there a list of different things that people should be trying to avoid or asking themselves beforehand?

Maybe asking themselves, "What type of person am I when it comes to casual sex? Is this for me is this not for me?" What kind of question they can ask themselves so that they can understand what kind of orientation they have and how relevant it is to them in what kind of situations?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes, I was just talking about that but, we will all differ on how interested and oriented toward casual sex we are and how comfortable we feel having sex with someone we don't very well or we're not very committed to. It's a personality trait that has its own name socio sexual orientation or socio sexuality and some people are very high on that and some people are very low on that.

People who don't desire sex with someone that they're not very close with, people who have negative attitudes towards this kind of sex, they're called restricted socio sexual. People who are very into it and very proving that they don't need a lot of time, people who just see someone and have that instant physical attractive reaction, they say, "I find this person very attractive. I just want to have sex with them right now, they're considered to be socio sexually unrestricted.

This is a continuum. Some people are very extroverted. Some people are very introverted and some people are somewhere in between. It's the same thing with socio sexuality.

What my research has shown is that, where you are on that spectrum matters or whether you're going to enjoy or your well-being will benefit from casual sex experiences or not. People should ask themselves, "Is this something that I want? Is this the kind of sex that I want to be having or am I doing it for other reasons?"

The more socio sexually unrestricted you are, the more you're well-being is going to benefit from random hookups or hookups in general.

[Angel Donovan]:How far do you think this is predetermined versus determined? I'll give you a quick background to me.

I was brought up Catholic. A very Catholic family, pretty hardcore restricted and sex was never spoken about and I learned some stuff off TV or whatever.

In my early years, I had a few girlfriends and that was it. I wouldn't have thought of going outside of that. Then, I got to a certain age and I decided to explore, probably because of an event that happened in my life. I split up with girlfriend and decided to change things up.

It was uncomfortable at first however, I pushed through it and began to enjoy it. I bring this up because you were talking about that some people are predetermined. I was wondering if you have done any research on how people can evolve or how you can look at yourself and decide, "This is something that I should explore".

We had Reid Mihalko, a sex educator on before and one of his pieces of advice was you should learn to be open and try and learn about who you are really deep inside without this shell that has been given to you socially depending on where you were brought up. Really trying to discover what biologically and you as a person really want to so that you can learn about what your sexual expression would be.

Obviously, a lot of people don't do that. They don't get past the discomfort. It's a problem if you can't think in a way that gets you past that discomfort becomes negative but, maybe, if you can think of it, if you can consciously change the way you think about it, then you're able to get past that and start seeing it.

I'll let you comment now but, I saw an article of yours I'd like to bring up afterwards.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:It's a really good question of how predetermined your sociosexuality is and as I was saying in the beginning, there is no one answer, that it's all biology or it's all socialization. It's a mix of a lot of different things.

We do have evidence to suggest that to some extent your sociosexuality is biologically predetermined based your levels of testosterone or your level of specific dopamine receptors in your brain. So people who, in general, have a higher sex drive and combined with high need for novelty and sensation seeking. These people tend to be more sociosexuality unrestricted.

They want more sex and they want more novelty in their sex. That certainly puts you in a predisposition to be unrestricted but, we cannot discount what is happening in our environment as well. We are products of our environment almost as much as we are products of our biology.

To some extent, how we grow up and the attitudes and values that we internalize make who we are as well. I agree with Reed that we should examine who we are and who we want to be but, our attitudes are part of that and we can choose whether we want to internalize this attitude that we've been taught or not.

You can say the same saying for attitudes that say college students see when they get to college from their social environment. They may have received one set of values from their parents but, then they come into their fraternities and sororities and they're told, "We hook up. That's what we do here. Hooking up is great and you got to hook up with the fraternity brothers or the little sisters."

That is just as much social learning as it was your parents saying that you shouldn't be doing it. It's really on to you to decide, "Where am I? What do I believe in? What do I think is right and what do I think is right for me?" Your level of desire biological predisposition should play a role in that.

If you are someone who biologically you don't really care much about sex or you don't care much about novelty, you just want to meet someone and get to know them better before you start having sex with them then, maybe that's the kind of value set that you should develop and adopt. All of these things play a role.

To go beyond just hormones or receptors in the brain and social learning, there are other things in our environment that determine our sociosexuality as well. Things like sex ratio. How many men versus how many women are in an environment? Usually, there are 50/50 in a society but there are societies where there more men or more women.

Our ways of thinking are likely to shift based on which sex is more available. Our preferences or comfort with casual sex is also likely to change depending on our personal physical and social circumstances.

If you are a guy who is very good looking, strong and has high social status then, your brain is going to calibrate to think, "I can get a lot of girls so, I'm going to want to get a lot of girls." If you are a guy who is not very good looking and not very physically or socially strong, then you would be wasting your time if you were trying to get a lot of women.

[Angel Donovan]:It's like an economics thing.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Your brain unconsciously probably reverts back to the other strategy and say, "No, I shouldn't be wasting my time trying to get with a hundred women. I should focus on maybe one or two women that I can have long terms relationships with.

[Angel Donovan]:That's interesting.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:It's the same for women. A lot of the time, women's promiscuity or interest in casual sex is held back by financial dependency on men, on their families or their partners. When women are financially stable themselves, they don't depend on anyone else, they are more free to engage in whatever kind of sex they want to.

We do see that in countries where women are more independent and even regardless of the country, within one country, women who are more independent financially often have higher sociosexuality or more unrestricted sociosexuality. All of these things matter. All of these things determine how interested we are in casual sex.

[Angel Donovan]:Is there any correlation between IQ? I've seen this mentioned a few times or intelligence or perhaps you can say, your profession? For example, you can put up lawyers or some of the higher professions. Is there any correlation between that and casual sex or not having casual sex.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:There's not a lot of research on that. There are only one or two studies that have looked at specifically IQ and sociosexuality.

I think there's one study showing that higher IQ link to higher sociosexuality but, I wouldn't put too much trust in those results because all those samples are very limited. They're all college students, for example and that's already a very restricted IQ group. College students on average are pretty high on IQ in general so, you don't get the variability that you would need to make such a claim.

We do know that lower SCS among young people, people who have less education, people who have dropped out of high school or only have high school level education, they are more likely to have casual sex than college students. There was new study that just came out recently that showed that in a large random sample of Ohio young people.

[Angel Donovan]:That kind of fits the stereotype, higher status, higher educated people are supposed to be more restrained.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes, to some extent.

[Angel Donovan]:Maybe it’s because they're more concerned about the social implications.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Probably, yes.

[Angel Donovan]:We've talk a little bit around. I'd like to make sure that we talk from the girl's perspective a bit. Is there any difference between men and women when it comes to the effects of the well-being of the experience itself?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:That's been a big question that a lot of people have tried to answer and when you look at how positive or how negative people evaluate their hook up experiences as, men always evaluate them as somewhat more positive and somewhat less negative then women do. Women are more likely to have ambivalent feelings, both positive and negative. They're also more likely to have mostly or only negative feelings than more mixed or just positive experiences.

Studies that have looked at effects on well-being, on this more stable sense of self-esteem or less satisfaction or anxiety or depression, most of the time don't find gender differences in effects. It seems like even though that women may be having somewhat less satisfying or less positive hook up experiences, they don't seem to be suffering from the negative well-being consequences overall any more than men do.

[Angel Donovan]:It sounds like the recorded satisfaction is lower but the recorded well-being is the same as if they were having the same satisfaction of experience as men.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:For the most, it doesn't seem to negatively impact overall well-being. In fact, these longitudinal studies where you can track the same people over time, see whether having casual sex have some sort of an impact later on, say three months later or six months later or one year later. On well-being, most studies find that there is no effect positive or negative over all in men or women.

For a lot of people, that's counterintuitive. Things like, "Wait a second. How can it not have an effect?" What my research has shown and what some other research is recently showing is that's because it doesn't have the same effect on everyone.

[Angel Donovan]:So, you're talking that it's like a mean effect that gets normalized out?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes, for some people, it probably has a negative effect, for other people it has a positive, for some people it has no effect but when you combine all of those people together in one sample, you'll notice the effects can of wash out and the mean effect end up being non-significant.

What we need to be looking at is these more sophisticated or more subtle differences between people like sociosexuality or your motivation. If you're doing it for the right reasons then, you have positive effects. If you're doing it for the wrong reasons then, it has negative effects.

So, it's the same for men and women. If you're doing it for the right reasons, whether you're a guy or a girl, it's going to have positive. If you're doing it for the wrong reasons, whether you're a guy or a girl, it's going to have negative.

[Angel Donovan]:The post that I was referring to, you spoke about autonomous versus non-autonomous behaviors driving it. Is that the final word on that? Is that actually what your research points out?

It's going to be good for you if it's an autonomous motivation and not good for you if it is non-autonomous. Is that pretty clear?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes, that's what my study showed and there's actually another study that uses slightly different methodology that found that people are doing it for these autonomous reasons. Autonomous reasons are because you really wanted to do it, because this is something that you really wanted to have sex with that person who you found attractive or because it was an important experience for you to have. You wanted to explore yourself and your sexuality. Those are all autonomous reasons.

In both my study and this other study showed that the more non-autonomous your motivation, your well-being following casual sex either didn't change or it actually improved but it certainly didn't go down. The people who were doing it for these strong reasons that I mentioned a couple times.

[Angel Donovan]:What does autonomous mean because, I don't think that's a word that everyone use every day?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:It means that it really comes from you. It's something that is really in line with who you are and what you want to be doing. It's not externally motivated.

[Angel Donovan]:It's like internally motivated? It comes from inside you without influence from outside?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:In one sense, it can be purely internally motivated or intrinsic is another word that has been often used in terms of motivation. Sometimes it can be not completely intrinsic but something that you internalize deeply and now agree with.

"I don't know if I'm enjoying this but I want to explore my sexuality because I think it's an important experience to have." That's all falls into this sense of autonomy. When you feel like you own your experience. When you feel like this is coming from you and you have control over what you're doing. You have a sense of ownership.

The non-autonomous reasons are reasons that feel external to who you are even if you are trying to avoid some negative feelings.

Both of these studies found that if you are going into this casual sex encounter hoping that you would improve your self-esteem, like you are feeling down and you are hoping this is going to help you feel better about yourself, it's not. It's actually going to make you feel worse about yourself.

If you don't go into it hoping it would make you feel better about yourself, it actually is going to make you feel better about yourself and more confident.

[Angel Donovan]:There was a list of nice interesting reasons. There were things like revenge sex, if you're doing it for revenge. For me, it seemed a lot of things related to stimuli from outside as usual, things like peer pressure.

An interesting example for the peer pressure one, by the way, is the pickup artist community and there's this other community, I don't know if you know, it's called the Manosphere?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes, I've heard.

[Angel Donovan]:There tends to be a lot of pressure in those communities to sleep with a lot of women and brag about your score, how many women you have slept with. That sounds very non-autonomous to me.

Unless, you've actually decided that that's for you, if you've got into one of those communities and you're doing it just because you're in that community, that's the sort of thing that could push down your well-being. I think we've seen cases where a lot of men in those communities get unhappy over time.

For me, it's an interesting area because it could be like saying, "This is why."

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Absolutely, study after study shows that men are a lot more likely to hook up due to peer pressure than are women. Especially on college campuses, if they're part of a fraternity, that kind of expect that or condone that.

[Angel Donovan]:Men do tend to do this bragging thing where as women are more discreet in general. They don't even tell each other the stories or is that what you've seen?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:They actually do talk about these things with their female often or sometimes with the male friends. The Casual Sex Project certainly suggests that both men and women talk to their friends about their experiences but the context is different.

Girls do it in order to share information, get support from their friends but, it's done in a mean kind of way, it's not done in a bragging sort of way, whereas guys, especially in those kinds of communities, tend to do it in a more negative way towards the women. The context is different.

There's no doubt that is a non-autonomous motivation. It's coming from your community. It's not coming from you. There's nothing wrong with having sex with a lot of different women but, if that's really if you want to be doing, if that's really making you happy, not your friends happy.

[Angel Donovan]:You shouldn't have to tell your friends to feel happy about it.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Exactly.

[Angel Donovan]:If you're one of these people that's running to a forum to post about it and that's the big motivation, you probably need to start asking yourself questions about that.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Exactly, if you're hooking up only so that you have stories to tell your friends then, you probably shouldn't be hooking up. If you're hooking up because you really are enjoying it, every moment that you spend doing that, you're loving it, then...

[Angel Donovan]:To put this into practical terms, it sounds like it's pretty simple from a guys' perspective. He should ask himself two questions: "Am I doing this because I am having fun and I think she's hot and I just want to have sex with her and I'm happy with that. I'm in the moment and I want to have fun with that." Or, "I'm really exploring my sexuality and I want to have more sexual experiences."

This kind of fits with the expression Reid Mihalko, this is also one that I think is really healthy has well. You can consciously decide that or that can be a natural one. If you just ask yourself if you've got one of those two motivations and if not, it could be a problem.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:There are other things other than motivation that can influence on to whether you have a good experience or a bad experience. You could go in with the right motives and still not get a good experience obviously but, that's the first thing and I think it's one of the most important things in whether you're going to have a good experience and not just a good experience in the moment but an experience that's going to enrich your well-being overall.

Those are the two main good reasons that should be driving your hookups, you want to do it or want to explore.

[Angel Donovan]:This is from the guys' perspective or from the girls', but it's mostly guys listening to this show. Although, there are a fair amount of women I get emails from so, I know they're listening too. This sort of applies to you too.

What I was saying, often the guy's leading more than the girls. I think there's this opportunity, now that we know about this casual sex well-being and it can have a negative effect and a positive effect. Is there ways that a guy should be looking out for things that can make it a positive experience for the girl he's with. Are there any things that he can think about or if he sees something, just interesting things you might have to say about that in practical terms? What could he be looking out for or doing?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes, everything that we're talking about up to this point was about your own personal well-being but, this is an interpersonal experience. There's always another personal involved. This is more important to men than to women because they often fail to make sure they're providing a good experience for their female partners.

Here's a couple of things that I've really like if guys paid more attention to. For one, not lying, not leading her on, and being very open and honest about what this is. If you know that this is just a hook up and you probably not going to be interested into pursuing anything more than that, don't tell them that this is something more. Don't lead them on to think that this is more.

Allow your female partner to be able to make an informed antonymous decision about whether she wants to engage in this or not and knowing whether this is just casual or something more is an important piece of information that she needs to have in order to make that decision.

[Angel Donovan]:In that case, if she's just interested in a relationship and you're just interested in casual sex, you're making it non-autonomous. You're forcing her into this bad well-being situation by forcing her to be non-autonomous.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Right, you're tricking her into making a non-autonomous decision because, if she knew that this was just casual, she would say no and that made lead to fewer to casual experiences for you but, at least you're not going to be a douche bag. You're going to be a good human being who is not going around and hurting other human beings.

Ultimately, that also comes back to you. Hurting others, especially on a regular basis, ultimately harms your well-being as well. That's a really important thing.

Another thing is to try and not take advantage of women who are drunk, especially very drunk, to make sure that this is what she wants in this situation as well. It's necessary to get a verbal, "Yes, this is what I want”, because, women are often a little too shy, not assertive enough to say no, just double check with them.

If the situation is unclear, especially for those one night stand settings when you just met someone, they seem like they want it but, they may not want it because they're really trash. Just check in with them.

[Angel Donovan]:That's for alcohol and drugs, anything that modifies the mind a little bit.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Exactly, that doesn't mean that someone who is tipsy or even fairly drunk is not autonomously wanting to have that experience but, they're ability to make that decision is certainly impaired. It's something to think about.

Another thing is to try to give pleasure to your partner. This is the big gender difference that we see in casual sex research. The less a guy knows a woman, the less interested he is in her pleasure and that is not true for women.

[Angel Donovan]:Can you repeat that please? The less he knows about...

[Zhana Vrangalova]:It is the less time he spent with a woman. If it's a one night stand with someone they just met versus someone they've known for a week versus a friend with benefits situation. The more someone is a stranger, the less interested that guy is to give pleasure to that person.

In those kinds of situations, the guys are usually just interested in getting pleasure themselves but not actually giving her pleasure, whereas, that's not true for women. Even in one night stands with someone they just met, the woman still want to please the guy. Does that make sense, what I'm saying?

[Angel Donovan]:Yes, if you said research is pointing to that, that's an interesting finding.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:That doesn't mean that all guys in a one night stand with a stranger situation don't want to please the woman but, there's certainly more guys finding themselves in that situation who are not very interested in pleasing the woman than there are women in the same situation not interested in pleasing the guy.

That, obviously, is directly contributing to her lack of positive experience with this. Even if you are never going to see her again, even if you just met her an hour ago, try to please her. Try to do things sexually and otherwise that are going to be hopefully, giving her some satisfaction.

Go down on her, finger her or ask her what she wants and how she would like to have sex, not just have her do things that you want. Women are less likely to be sexually assertive in these situations.

[Angel Donovan]: This may become the level of objectifying you have around you when you're having sex with someone versus making a mutual experience between you and her because, when you're having sex with someone, it's like a team sport. It's much better when it's like that. Otherwise, you could be pushing someone around and it's more of an objective thing.

It's more about getting off rather than the actual experience itself. Would that tie in anywhere with the fact that you're looking for new experiences? Or, is it like a deep level of experience versus some people might be autonomous and just looking for experience say, "I'm with a red head tonight. I'm happy with that because I am with a red head tonight," versus something a bit more deeper?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:I think that's fine. It's totally fine to say, "I want a red head tonight" but, when you're with that red head, give as much as yourself to that experience because, it's going to make it better for you too. It's going to make for a better experience than having a human flesh light that you're just masturbating with.

It is more pleasurable for people when you're more involved and when both people are more giving but it's certainly going to make it a better experience for her and that's just nice. That's just being a decent human being.

[Angel Donovan]:The quality of sex is definitely much better than when we're giving so, it makes no sense not to do it.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Often times, that's come up in research as well, guys will in those very casual context with people you don't know very well or they haven't had sex with prior many times before, they're trying to keep it casual and because of that, they're holding back, they're being very detached from the experience.

Some of the most common complaints on the Casual Sex Project from women when this happens are, "Guys, I know it's casual but, you're making it a crappy experience for me because you're not really into it. If you're going to get all attached just because you gave me this great attention and you made me cum three in this one hour. I'm still going to know that it's casual. So, make it a more pleasant fun experience for both of us."

That's not truly something that guys usually understand as they get older. I am not sure what age demographic your listeners are but, we do find this both in anecdotal experience and in some research that as they get out of that 18-25 especially post-college age, guys actually learn that. "If I'm more respectful and more loving in the moment, even if it's just for one hour, even if I'm never going to see her again, it's going to be a better experience," and they start doing that more.

[Angel Donovan]:I also think some it's not necessarily this not wanting to commit, not being wanting it to be seen as anything but casual, it's also shyness as well. A lot of guys, the way they deal with shyness, is being a bit cold.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes, that's the other side of that coin but, there's no need for it. We're here, there's this one hour for one night, whatever it is that you have, make the most out of it.

[Angel Donovan]:You're there and you're in bed, you're in a very intimate situation you can either give yourself fully to that experience and make the most of it or you can be withdrawn and you're just detracting from the whole experience. If you're going to be there, it's like with everything else in life, be 100% there and give it your all.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Exactly, you're already there naked, it's happening so, make it the best that it could possibly be. Even that's not a guarantee. It still might end up being bad sex. You still might end up hurting the person or they end up hurting you in some way but, it increases your chances of having a good positive experience.

[Angel Donovan]:Yes, it gives you more chance of having a big upside. We talked about alcohol and drugs there. Is condom use, does that make a difference? If I use a condom in casual sex versus not, is that going to make a difference to the girl?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:It is certainly going to make a difference if...

[Angel Donovan]:...she gets pregnant.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:It's the difference of getting pregnant and not or...

[Angel Donovan]:Putting that aside, say nothing physical happens because women have this aspect. We can both get STIs but she can get pregnant which is a bigger thing. When you were talking about earlier, women are often less satisfied of casual sex, I was thinking, "Perhaps is just biological because she's worried she might be pregnant now. Could be those ones that didn't use condoms?" Does that anxiety bring down that satisfaction level?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Absolutely, the anxiety is higher in women because they're more at risk. Even with some STI, the transmission from men to women is much riskier and higher than from women to men. Often times, men are asymptomatic carriers of diseases, they don't even know that they have them but the women will get it.

The risk of transmitting HIV is twice or three times higher from male to female than female to male. So, women are at higher risk of both STIs and pregnancy. It's only expected that their anxiety will be higher. So, always carry a condom on you, always, always.

[Angel Donovan]:Definitely, guys, you should have two in your wallet. That's been my case for 20 years or so and it's always very helpful.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:It also depends on some people are just more anxious about these things, some people are less anxious. The more anxious you are obviously, the more important it is to use a condom but, that's absolutely one thing that's going to improve your chance of having a good experience for both of you, that's going to be fast.

[Angel Donovan]:Thanks for this topic. Is there anything that we've missed that has been really interested about this well-being and casual sex research.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:I don't know. I think we've covered a lot.

[Angel Donovan]:Are there any gaps or what do you think the future is going to hold next 10 years in research in this area? Are there interesting things, anything that you want to talk about, gaps that you wish could be filled and maybe would be filled later or anything interesting about where you'd hope the research goes in the future or could go?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:There are still so many things that we don't know, so many gaps that need to be filled. Some of the things are really getting to the bottom of this casual sex well-being link.

What are all the different things that make a difference because we've been asking that very simple question, "Is casual sex bad for your health or not?" for 15 years now and I think that we now know that, if you just look at that simple link, the answer is no. It doesn't matter. It doesn't have an effect that is the same for everyone but, now we really have to look at these factors on which that link depend on and autonomy or pleasure is maybe just one of those links but, there's so many other things that we still haven't explored that this might depend on.

Another thing is, we're learning more about casual sex in non-college students and people who are beyond that 18-25 age-range and also another racial and ethnic backgrounds in a more cross-cultural perspective.

[Angel Donovan]:I'm guessing there hasn't been much research done in other countries outside the US?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:No, there really hasn't been much. Some of the other western countries like the UK, Canada, and Australia but, very, very little in other cultures. Granted in other cultures, it may have a very different meaning. It may be the same thing that we're talking about, could be a very different thing in non-Western cultures.

That requires a whole another set of assumptions and theories and methods to cover but, I'm really fascinated in mid-life and older age and what happens there. That is something that the West hasn't explored much yet but, we know that it doesn't end with guys and girls in their 20's.

A lot of people are doing it afterwards because, we're going through all these transitions. People are getting divorced, cheating, opening up their relationship and all of that is happening now a lot more than it was in the past so, we need to focus on that more.

[Angel Donovan]:I think there are some very interesting trends going on there. As you say, divorce has become pretty much the norm. There's a lot more cheating, these affair dating websites.

My own experience is that women say over age of 30 on Tinder and OKCupid, they're very straight forward. Compared to the younger women, it's a very different experience and they are very much more comfortable with casual sex. It seems that way.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes, we have some evidence to suggest that women in their late 20's, 30's and early 40's are certainly thinking more about sex, more comfortable with casual sex. They're often times discovering their sexuality really for the first time because, maybe they were in a very long term relationship or got into a marriage which was someone who was their first partner and who wasn't a very good or positive sexual partner and for the first time, they're going into this new world of dating and casual sex. There is certainly a lot going on there that we need to know more about.

[Angel Donovan]:Definitely, who, besides yourself, would you recommend for high quality advice in this area or dating, sexual relationships? Are there any researchers that you watch or people you respect their advice or anything, anyone you respect?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Wow, there's so many but, Geoffrey Miller who was, up until very recently, at Harvard who runs the Reds the Blog, the physiology of human sexuality. He's been also studying hook ups and friends with benefits relationship and writing a lot about sexuality so, he's someone that I often read and respect as a scholar.

Terry Connelly at the University of Michigan is someone who has been studying non-monogamy. She's actually leading their research in consensual non-monogamy for the last 5 years or so. She's definitely someone to look out for. I don't know. There's so many.

[Angel Donovan]:If those are your top two or top three, that's great.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Those are certainly my top two academics. Also, Jesse Owen, if you want to talk about casual sex, at the University of Kentucky or it could be Kansas. Those two states are mixed up in my head.

There have been a number of researchers doing great research on casual sex and non-monogamy lately.

[Angel Donovan]:Great to hear there's more work being done. Just a couple personal questions to get to know you. You can say no to these if you want. What has been your greatest relationship conflict?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:My greatest relationship conflict? It was probably about monogamy and the level of monogamy or non-monogamy and that would be, should be incorporated in my relationships but that's all I'm going to tell you.

[Angel Donovan]:Ok, that's great. Defining the boundaries of where monogamy and what we're allowed to do versus not, which is a very common struggle between people and something that's not often communicated very well.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes, that's really the saddest part that people just except the norms or the expectations that have been set for them and they rarely discuss and examine these things but, they're really important to be examined in a relationship. Talk about that and figure out what you want and what your partner wants and find common ground.

[Angel Donovan]:Not easy all the time. What has become more important to you in recent years in this area compared to before. You're in your 30's now, maybe in your 20's. What is the biggest change for you in terms of the way you look at dating, sexual relationships this whole aspect of your life, has there been one particular thing that changed for you over that time.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:I don't know. That's a tough question.

[Angel Donovan]:I ask tough questions.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:We always change.

[Angel Donovan]:My struggle has been between polyamory and monogamy. I did polyamory for a while and then I decided that for a few reasons that it wasn't right for me. I sided with monogamy and it was unconscious monogamy and I consciously chose polyamory.

Then after a while, I decided it was having negative effects on my life that I didn't like so, I went to monogamy again. Now, I'm kind of at this point where I'm figuring it out and say, "I have all these experiences. Now, I can decide what I consciously want to do.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Are you still happy with monogamy?

[Angel Donovan]:Actually, I've been thinking about how I can fit everyone into my life style now and what I want and it comes down, if I meet the right person, I'll do the monogamy thing but, if I don't I'll stick with the polyamory thing until that happens. I'm ok with that and I'm happy with it and fits with my lifestyle the way I'm structuring it for better words, rather than it was interfering with my life and some of the things I liked before.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:When you say polyamory, do you really mean polyamory or you kind of use that as a general term for all non-monogamous.

[Angel Donovan]:It's a loose casual sex but, I don't do one night stands. I tend to see people for a while. It's more like a polyamory thing than casual sex.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:The other thing, there's so many different types of non-monogamy. There's not one way of doing it. There's not one relationship arrangement that is a non-monogamous type. People can organize that in so many different ways.

When I talk about this I like to say, it's like the opening lines of Anna Karenina Tolstoy's book. He says, "All happy families are happy in the same way. All unhappy families are unhappy in their own way."

That's very applicable to monogamous and non-monogamous relationships. All monogamous are monogamous in the same way. There's only one rule; you don't do anything with anyone else.

But all non-monogamous relationships are non-monogamous in their own way. There are so many different rules to have. Are you allowed to sleep friends versus non-friends? Are you allowed to have casual sex or long-term partners? How often are you supposed to do it and where? What kind of behaviors allowed to engage in and not engage in and so on.

[Angel Donovan]:We discussed the complexities of establishing boundaries and figuring that out and different relationships. It is more complicated. You really have to know what you want. That's kind of why I feel like I am right now. I can say, "This is how things are for me. If you're not happy with that then, maybe this isn't a good idea but, if you are ok with that."

[Zhana Vrangalova]:It's good to know what you want and what's going work for you and what doesn't.

[Angel Donovan]:It takes time to figure it out and it takes a whole bunch of relationships as well and having things go wrong. It's difficult to start with a perfect blueprint or anything. It's something that you have to learn through trial and error for most people. It's about self-expression and self-awareness and understanding what works with your life.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Absolutely. it does take trial and error and sometimes many relationships. Sometimes, you can do it in the same relationship. You try different things.

[Angel Donovan]:That's interesting. I think that might even be necessary these days if you're going to have a 20-year, 30-year relationship. Some aspects of it have to evolve over time because, we change so much these days. We're exposed to so many more learning experiences and experience that change us over time. So many different jobs and also things change us in our lives.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:You move around. You travel.

[Angel Donovan]:We travel and all these things can open us up and change us over time. I think it's mandatory to have that kind of perspective about relationship and to not just say, "We got married and this is going to be like this for the rest of our lives." That's a recipe for disaster and even just for years maybe.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes, it's unrealistic to expect that things are going to stay the same and you have to be open to exploring and having things change over time. It's going to be.

[Angel Donovan]:Last question. Thank you so much for your time today. Top three recommendations to help men get results as fast as possible with women? What pieces of advice would be from you?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:That's so broad. Success with casual sex?

[Angel Donovan]:It is meant to be broad. It's anything that you have top of mind. What are your top three suggestions?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:There going to be just as broad as your question but, just be honest and don't lie, don't mislead, be respectful.

[Angel Donovan]:Just to interrupt you for a second, you're the first person to tell me that was a bad question. Thank you very much.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:It's not a bad question, it's a broad question.

[Angel Donovan]:Ok. Cool. So, anyway number 2. Sorry for interrupting. Respect?

[Zhana Vrangalova]:Yes, number 2 is respect. What would be number 3? Be good at it. Learn about what gets women off, what makes them happy and then give it to them. Be a good lover.

Look good too. That's easier for some than for others but, try and put some time and effort into your appearance. That would be number 4.

Number 1 is honest, 2 respectful, 3 be a good lover and an open-minded lover, someone that they can feel like they can explore with that encourages them to explore rather than get closed off and then 4 look good.

[Angel Donovan]:That's great. Thank you for those.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:I hope that that's helpful.

[Angel Donovan]:Like I said to that third point, it's extremely important. Keep an open mind and always be learning so that you can better at this. It makes all the difference.

Thank you very much for your time today as well, Zhana. It's been a great chat. Really enjoyed it myself and you've brought all of these ideas that are kind of counter-intuitive about casual sex here which, normally people think casual sex, they say it's bad but, obviously your research points in a different direction.

[Zhana Vrangalova]:It doesn't have to be. All depends on who you are and how you do it.