Lovestruck: who falls harder, faster?
We all love to be loved. But women and men feel romantic love differently. Until now, research has focused on the difference in romantic love between the sexes. A new study led by The Australian National University is the first to do it with people who are currently in love. Published in the journal ‘Biology of Sex Differences’(opens in new window), the results may not fit certain stereotypes or beliefs we have about love.
Crazy little thing called love
“Romantic love is under-researched given its importance in family and romantic relationship formation, its influence on culture, and its proposed universality. We want to help people understand it,” commented lead author and biological anthropologist Adam Bode in a news release(opens in new window). “This is the first study to investigate differences between women and men experiencing romantic love, using a relatively large cross-cultural sample,” he added. “It is the first convincing evidence that women and men differ in some aspects of romantic love.” The researchers analysed more than 800 young adults aged between 18 and 25 who were in the first 2 years of being in love. The sample was taken from 33 countries in Europe, North America and South Africa. They used data from the Romantic Love Survey 2022(opens in new window) – the world’s largest and most cross-cultural survey of people experiencing romantic love. The research team used questions to compare how many times the respondents had been in love, when they fell in love, the intensity of that love, how much they obsessed over their partner and commitment levels. The responses revealed that men fell in love about a month earlier than women. They also fell in love slightly more often, too. The reason for this is probably because men are usually required to show their commitment in order to attract a partner. On the other hand, women experienced romantic love more intensely, obsessed more about their partner and thought about their loved ones more than men did. “We had initially set out thinking we’d find meaningful sex differences in romantic love, yet we also found that alternative individual and ecological factors, such as gender inequality, probably play an important role in the intensity of romantic love, obsessive thinking, and commitment,” Bode explained. “Our study suggests that people from more gender-equal countries experience a lower intensity of romantic love, obsessive thinking, and maybe even commitment.”
He loves me, he loves me not
Almost 40 % of both sexes fell in love after forming a relationship, with 30 % of men and 20 % of women falling in love before the relationship had become ‘official’. Overall, the findings suggest that any sex differences in romantic love aren’t only explained by biological sex but also by social norms and the pressure humans faced over the course of time to find a mate and to keep our species going. “These new insights into whether sex differences in romantic love truly exist will help develop future theories about the evolution of romantic love,” concluded Bode.