We've all been there. We hook up with someone, and regret it the next day. We're sexual beings, and sometimes if it's been awhile, we're a little tipsy, or we just aren't thinking about it before we do it, we hook up with someone we wouldn't have under different circumstances. The short answer is that we can't take that hookup back. It's not the end of the world though. Sometimes we might even want to take a good hookup back, just because of the relationships involved. Dozens of regrettable hookups are happening RIGHT NOW as you read this article, so don't sweat it. You're not alone, and anyone who might try to make you feel bad about a hookup (good or bad) is most likely trying to make you feel the way they've at one time been made to feel for one of their hookups.

There are lots of variables here though, and the best you can do is manage situations, change your thinking on things, and maybe even do a little damage control when necessary. So stop feeling bad for yourself, pour yourself a glass of wine, and read on as XXXConnect.com takes a closer look at some of the awkward situations that you may find yourself in, where you might think, "Can I take back a bad hookup?"

There are lots of different reasons to regret a hookup. One of the most common ones portrayed in Hollywood is what's rather grossly referred to as a Coyote Ugly hookup. This is when you wake up the next morning, not sure where you are, and looking beside you to see that your arm is trapped underneath the body of someone you... Let's be diplomatic and say someone you don't find as attractive as you seem to have found them the night before. Someone that you'd rather not have breakfast with, and with whom you definitely don't want to have sex with again. The 'coyote ugly' part is because you'd rather chew your own arm off like a coyote, than have to be there when they wake up. Not the most charming of names, BUT a situation that to varying degrees, a good number of people can relate to. Sometimes when you're out at a bar with your friends, maybe dancing, you get a little tipsy, your judgement isn't working at 100%, and something about either the night, the mood, or even that person at the moment, makes you want to hook up with them.

Ideally you'll wake up, and even if you're not super into the person, you'll at least remember the night, and you won't be too taken aback by the situation. We suggest that unless you really don't like the person, you don't freak out. If you're able to sneak out, that's fine. If they wake up and ask if you want to go for breakfast, you can simply say that you have plans to meet up with friends for brunch, but thanks for the fun night. There's no need to be a jerk about it, and if they seem interested in hooking up again, you can politely make up an excuse as to why that isn't a good idea.

If you're worried about them telling mutual friends that you hooked up, and you find yourself embarrassed, there isn't much you can do. Don't do the whole, "I think it would be better if we didn't tell anyone about last night," or "How about we forget that last night ever happened?" because that can be pretty hurtful. You hooked up, and unless it's not going to cause some sort of personal drama between with someone else, everything will be fine. You may the butt of a few jokes from your friends, but they kid because they love, and because they've probably been there before. Maybe even with the same person!

If you hook up with a friend and regret it soon after, that's a much different beast, and one that needs to be handled very delicately. Getting a feel for how your friend feels about it the next day is important to figure out how to proceed. Hopefully they feel the same way as you, and you can just chalk it up as a fun mistake that will simply add to the history of your friendship. This is the perfect situation because if you both agree that it was a mistake, you're both going to likely agree that it's something that you should keep between yourselves and not tell anyone else. This might be the closest that's actionably possible to taking back a bad hookup.

The next few times you hangout together might be a touch awkward, but it'll become less awkward over time, and you'll go back to being friends. Maybe even closer friends than you were before, in an odd twist of fate, because you'll have that incident of vulnerability between each other. A lot of people don't stay in touch with their exes or people that they have one night stands with, because it's often more awkwardness than they want to deal with. In this situation though, in all but the rarest of cases, it's usually okay.

We find that a good policy when it comes to hookups (whether it's something that we should have to have or not, is to assume that anyone you have sex with, someone that you know is going to hear about, and then how far that knowledge is passed along is all a matter of how gossipy your friends are. So if you enjoy getting your friends to deal dirt on other people, you can't really complain. And to be honest, there usually isn't that much to be worried about anyways. Like we've already said, everyone has hookups that they regret, so nobody's going to judge you too harshly unless the person that you hooked up with is someone that know you probably should have for personal or political reasons. Then you may have some shade thrown your way by various people. It's not often that that will happen, but we only bring it up in connection to the idea that if you assume that nobody you sleep with will remain a secret, it's a good way to train your brain to make wiser decisions when there may be repercussions that you don't want to deal with, if you hook up with a particular person.

Our private lives SHOULD be private, but it's just a fact that the age that we live in lends itself to an incredibly quick spreading of information, whether we want that information spread or not. So always keep that in mind, and/or restrict your hookups to people who you're confident you can trust to keep things private if that's the way you want them kept.

You're grown. You don't have to worry about your friends (or at worst, YOUR PARENTS) finding out about who you're sleeping with, the same way you did back in high school (or maybe even college/university). Being an adult can be challenging, but one of the best parts of it is that you're free to hook up with whoever you please. We can often find yourselves wrapped up in old anxieties that we had when we were younger, and that prevents us from fully embracing the freedom of sexual choices that we have as adults. We don't have to take back a bad hookup. We're allowed to have as many of them as we want, and that's pretty liberating if you think about it the right way.

Perhaps you're a little reserved when it comes to who you hook up with, and you find yourself feeling uncomfortable after a hookup that didn't mean as much to you as the majority of your previous sexual experience. That's a entirely legitimate feeling. We just want to encourage you to not let the way you've always done things, determine how you feel about this new experience. As we've been saying over and over again, we all have bad hookups. It's part of being sexually active. If there was a foolproof way to identify a good hookup before it happened, think of how easy dating would be. Probably too easy though.

Embrace the freedom that you have as an independent and sexually active person, and as soon as you learn to embrace bad hookups as a simple hazard of dating, you'll be enjoying your dating life a lot more.

If there's potential drama attached to a bad hookup, or you feel like you'd sleep better at night if you had a quick discussion with the person to make sure that you're on the same page, then by all means, you should have that talk. It may not be a super comfortable conversation, but you might find yourself surprised by how easy being open and honestly discussing sex can be when both parties involved are open to having the conversation. If it's a situation where you really don't want any potential weirdness to arise from the hookup, and you can bring it up in a reasonable and calm way, then you should. Not always, but sometimes just being straightforward is the best route to making sure that bad hookups end up being as unimportant to yours and your hook up's life moving forward. It saves potential days of wondering and worry on both sides, that could only end up making things worse than they need to be.

As we get older, it's almost comical how little we think about past bad hookups. People and situations that we at one point spent days stressing over, eventually all fade off into some galaxy of hazy memories that don't have any control or influence over our day to day life. Heck, we sometimes even have bad hookups later on that make us try to think back on a hookup that we stressed over in the past, so that we can compare them, and think about if there's really any reason to be worrying so much, and when we try to think back on that hookup, it's a blur. Sometimes you don't remember that person's name. Maybe you don't even remember why you were so worried about it. And if by some miracle you do still remember it, you might think that that was a great hookup when you compare it to what you're dealing with currently. Our brains have a really interesting way of making us believe that things are more important in the moment than they ultimately will be down the road. So keep that in mind when you find yourself trying to take back a bad hookup. One day, this so-called bad hookup will be a thing of the past, and you'll have moved on without it having any negative impact on your life.

As our final point about taking back bad hookups, we want to remind you that practice makes perfect, and sometimes bad hookups play a very important role in upping our sex game. If you deprived yourself of every bad hookup that you'll have in life, you'll also be depriving yourself of a lot of lessons learned, which could end up making YOU someone else's bad hookup that they wish they could take back. Embrace and be thankful for every time someone is willing to sleep with you. Even if it's not under the perfect circumstances, and you end up wanting to scrub it from your memory banks the next morning, there'll be some sort of positive that you can take away from it. Plus, you're just going to forget about it in a few years anyway!

Did we answer all your questions you needed on this subject? If so, then why not check out our other extensive hookup advice guides by CLICKING HERE?

Want to know how you shy guys out there should use hookup apps? Find out now by reading our article HERE!