Well, I'm not a man but I can partially answer your question.

A man can have sex many times with a woman and never fall in love with her. I imagine that there need not be any attachment at all, although I hope this is somewhat rare that they don't even feel some sort of humanity towards her.

I had a boyfriend who, after a very brief acquaintance, was completely convinced that we were getting married and would get old and die together; I was pretty sure I'd be over him by the time the next season of Survivor started.

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If a guy has sex with a woman more than once, does that mean that an attachment of some sort on his side (it doesn't have to be love) has formed? Or can a guy have sex with the same woman more than once without forming any sort of attachment?

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Men's range of bonding is just as great as women's range, but the commonality is skewed more towards your second sentence than your first, I believe.

Are you working on a believable guy character? Make him a person first, and let the story dictate the remainder.

The reason I'm asking is because I have an unsympathetic character who sleeps with a woman. He thinks she's gorgeous, but he has no further affection than that. I'm thinking of having him see her once or twice more before he leaves the town for good because it will be a way of explaining some of the fantastical elements of the story in an unobstrusive manner. She won't appear again in the story except as a thought later on when the guy has gone through some changes in his thought process. Even then, she'll be lumped in with a bunch of other women he's been with and barely remembered.

The problem is that when I wrote down the outline for the scenes mentioned above, I began to wonder if there wouldn't be some sort of attachment. I mean, he's cold, but at this point in the story, he's not entirely heartless. He would probably call himself a pragmatist and his ethics are definitely consequentialist/"ends justify the means" kind of stuff, though that changes by the end of the story.

The true bastard lies about it to get her in bed and keep her there until he's done -- "I love you, baby, you know it'll last forever."

For example, he could be a cocky love-'em-and-leave-'em SOB who can't love anybody but himself. (Added twist: he could fool around and fall in love.) This sort of guy would also be a cocky SOB in the rest of life.

Maybe he's commitmentphobic. We could also notice that all his friendships are shallow.

Maybe he's a bumbler who does what feels good in the moment, and finds himself living with a woman and wonders how it happened.

Now a man can have sex with a woman and not love her, but most decent guys will at least break it off before moving on to another woman.

Christine's friend is a perfect example of the kind of woman with whom even a pretty nice guy will continue a somewhat casual sexual relationship mostly as a way of avoiding making a scene before he has a good excuse for breaking up with her. Sure, a few upper percentile guys aren't going to sleep with her in the first place, but even the good guys will just use sex as a way to keep her docile while they figure out how to terminate the relationship.

On the other hand, conquest type guys come in several types, and go after different kinds of women. For some of them, stringing a woman along for as long as possible is the name of the game. They're looking for women that can be strung along, who really want a commitment Where a conquer once guy will only get a thrill out of the first time, and doesn't really work to keep a relationship going. But both types will be flattered if a woman "comes back for more". That she would do that proves the depth of the conquest. Still, neither will be likely to turn her down unless it means giving up on a new conquest.

If the woman is the "conquerer", and the guy knows it, he might have a negative attachment, hating himself every time he gives in, but that probably counts as attachment. Or she might just be casual about sex. If the guy is also pretty casual about it, there is no reason either would see multiple occasions as being particularly special. She could be using him, deliberately offering sex to form an attachment. The guy might be stealing the bait in that case, taking a bit of pride in avoiding getting hooked.

Anyway, I tend to believe that sex and love are entirely different things. But I strongly feel that there can be nothing better than having sex with someone you love. And I believe that bonds are strengthened between two people in love when they have sex.

Sex, at its most basic level, is a biological necessity. Regardless of societal customs and religious beliefs, nearly everyone has some desire to procreate. It is absolutely necessary for species survival. We like to dress it up, but there's no denying its true purpose. That we can also have sex for non-proceative reasons is not unique to humans, but nevertheless is fascinating. Moreover, that we can override our instinct and choose NOT to have sex is extremely fascinating.

Everyone responds differently of course. This is a product of several factors, including society, customs, religous beliefs, and individual experiences, as well as "second-hand" experience (friends, family, etc.). If you are raised to believe that sex is bad, dirty, naughty, evil, and the like, then you may carry those beliefs into your adulthood. Or you may rebel against them. Either way, everything that happens in your life will shape your attitude towards sex in general. Our minds are rather malleable. We are essentially products of our environment. And we need only look to other customs and societies for evidence of this.

Let's not leave out simple sexual attraction. It is completely possible to be sexually attracted to someone, and yet not really like them very much. A good many relationships start this way. Many frown on this model of relationships -- it's probably not psychologically healthy. It may very well be physically unhealthy. Perhaps, it is only "practice". Perhaps it's something else.

So, whether male or female, each person is going to approach a sexual relationship differently. But the one common thing is mostly all of us desire to have sex. It's in our genes. How we handle our sexual relationships are a direct result of our life experience. There is no true stereotype, and anything is possible.

Are women generally more monogamous then men? I strongly doubt it. My experience in the military proved to me that this is patently untrue. In fact, more military spouses cheated on their husbands than the other way around. Why? I don't know, really. Loneliness, maybe. That need to be with someone, to feel wanted and loved. Maybe the passion has waned. Or maybe it's justified when a spouse is away for up to a year. I got engaged very young to a woman I met while in the military. I got sent to Japan, and she stayed behind in the states. Some of the guys I knew in the states came to Japan shortly after I did and told me what my fiancee was up to in my absence. When I confronted her about it, she didn't lie. She admitted that she was lonely and needed someone all the time. I was also lonely, and I had several opportunities to sleep with other women. But I didn't. Because I was raised that this inappropriate behavior. And because of that belief, I did not stray. Upon her admission of cheating, I ended our engagement. Obviously, we had different moralities, and we could never be happy together, nor could I ever trust her in any regard.

Undeniably, it is possible to be in love with someone and still be sexually attracted to someone else. Whether one acts on that attraction is a matter of morality, I suppose (or in some cases, far too much alcohol). But I feel that's societal or religious morality at work, not necessarily your instinctual morality. I am still madly in love with my wife, but I freely admit that I'm often attracted to other women... Angelina Jolie, for instance. I think she's an idiot, but she's hot. And it would be a real test of will if she found me attractive and intimated that she'd like to have sex with me. This will never happen, of course, but that I feel that attraction doesn't mean I don't love and adore my wife. It just means I'm human. And at least I have the will to choose my actions, for better or worse. I don't have to be a slave to my hormones, I can overcome them. It's not always easy, but often the right thing to do isn't easy.

I don't think that most guys could sleep with a woman twice and feel no attachment. I mean, for the purposes of the psychology I have to assume that he at least remembered that he'd had sex with her before, right? But that's assuming an attachment prior to the subsequent episodes. If a guy doesn't remember that he's already had sex with a particular woman, he isn't likely to suddenly remember it after having sex with her a second time (it's possible if he has had sex with a lot of women, is not very bright or was incapacitated, and this particular woman has some outstanding characteristic that becomes apparent only during sex).

For myself, assuming that I'd had sex with a woman before becoming deeply attached to her, I can see no logical reason that having one or two more encounters with her would cause me to form deep feelings for her. For guys, feelings lead to sex, not the other way round. If the feelings that led to sex the first time are shallow, then those same feelings (or even shallower feelings, like laziness) will be sufficient for a couple more times.

I mean, the first time you have sex with someone, you probably have more reasons not to have sex with that person than you would after already having had sex (assuming that you don't find out something deeply disturbing about that person during or subsequent to the first time). So it isn't reasonable to think that having sex a second or third time means that you are more "attached". It's possible, but far from certain...probably far from likely.

Men are very good at compartmentalising their thoughts about things like this.

Now this may seem unsavoury but please bear with the analogy.

Why does a hooker have sex? Can they have sex with the same guy more than once and not become attached. Of course they can! They have a reason too.

Similarly, and please don't think I am saying 'all men are hookers' but you have to know the reason for sex before you can make a generalisation about attachment.

I find the question says more about the asker than the answerers. It is almost amzing to think that someone may believe that men have less reasons to sleep with someone than the woman they are sleeping with.

You have to know WHY the guy is having sex.
Believe it or not we can have lots of reasons.

tsk tsk tsk!

In a nutshell, Mike's first response was spot-on.

I've known far more women -- friends, family and acquaintances -- who have cared nothing for the guys they've been with than I have men. In fact, just from what I've heard and seen, men tend to form stronger attachments and are more crushed by break-ups than women. They may act like they don't care, but they do. In fact, I've noticed guys hide a lot of emotions where few can see.

That's been my experience.

That's why I asked this question. I thought maybe, when it came to something so intimate, that there was something I might have missed. Thanks to all the responses, I've decided to stick with my character's superficial reasons that he made pretty clear in the first place. Of course, it won't be that simple later on in the story, but I digress.

Now, back to writing.

But as for sex...I don't know whether the act of sex directly affects a woman's feelings for a man. I suspect it does. The same is simply not as true of men. I won't say it's not true at all, because men and women are from the same species, there's bound to be some similarity.

But generally speaking, if a guy is totally smitten with a woman after sex, then he felt that way before sex. If he feels like they have a life-long bond after the second time, he probably felt that way after the first time and before the first time.

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Guys feel just as smashed up about break-ups when there was never any sexual activity, after all. Often more so.

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True. And one of the more devestating lines a woman can use is: "I only want to be friends."

Oh, it seems harmless enough. But if a guy likes a woman, wants more than friendship, those words are the equivalent of a 4-ton Acme anvil dropping out of the sky and landing our heads, squashing us flat, and leaving us permanently scarred.

And if the guy is silly enough to accept that friendship thinking something good might happen later (when 99% of the time the relationship won't change), then that's like running off a cliff while chasing that road runner, staying supsended in the air long enough to realize your folly, and finally plummeting several thousand feet to a sticky end and a dusty mushroom cloud.

There are alpha males, then there are the rest of us. While all humans are potential victims of having our hearts broken by the opposite sex, the alpha males are the ones who most often break women's hearts. The rest of us get broken. Frequently.

In the animal kingdom, especially mammals, the female's job is to choose her mate. The male's job is to get chosen . . . or live a lonesome life.

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I've known far more women -- friends, family and acquaintances -- who have cared nothing for the guys they've been with than I have men.

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I assume you mean "talked to" and not met. Assuming you're a woman. Also, "talked to" could be different from "told the truth by". Maybe just as there are more women who smoke than men (or maybe the market growth was bigger at one point) women try to conceal their feelings more now in the post-feminist era, which was once more of a male behavior. Just possibilities.

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My only insight into this is my experience with women in the military. They tended to marry the first man they met who "satisfied" them, after a while of shopping.

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Poor Ferguson, and all those other poor drunken slobs! I feel so bad knowing this.