Women regret love failures more than men

Women regret love failures more than men

While the common adage may encourage you not to dwell on the past, a new study finds that many harbor regrets, with romantic ones being particularly common.

But women outdid men in that category, with guys ranking work regrets above relationship ones, the researchers say. The study involved 370 Americans who were asked to discuss a significant regret from their lives. The most common regrets had to do with romance, family, education, career and finance.

“Regret is a common part of our lives, and it’s something that we see ... in people of all walks of life,” said study researcher Neal Roese, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

But he said that regret could also be beneficial.

“The bad is obvious, but the good is it helps us put our lives together, helping us to put things into perspective,” said Roese. With romantic regrets, he said, “It helps to recognize ideals and goals. ...You can channel it into a current relationship. You may see some kernel of insight you can implement in your current life.”

Studying regret: Much of the research on regret is based on tests of college students, who are relatively inexpensive to compensate, simple to recruit and live on or near the campuses where the studies are done. In an attempt to get a better handle on regrets among the general public, this survey was done via phone to reach more diverse subjects.

Roese said that one finding in the current study that differed from past research was that romance, rather than education, was a primary source of regret.

However, he noted that there was a split. Nearly 45 percent of women expressed regret in the area of love, while less than 20 percent of men did. Meanwhile, nearly 35 percent of men expressed work regrets, compared with less than 30 percent of women.