Men fall in love quicker, but women love more intensely, according to new Australian research.
The Australian National University (ANU) study, which is the first to focus on people in love, found men fell in love, on average, about one month earlier than women.
Lead author and ANU PhD student Adam Bode said the data also found women experienced romantic love slightly more intensely, and women thought about their loved ones more than men.
Mr Bode said while previous studies had researched the difference in romantic love between the sexes, this was the first to do it with people currently in love.
“This is the first study to investigate differences between women and men experiencing romantic love, using a relatively large cross-cultural sample. It is the first convincing evidence that women and men differ in some aspects of romantic love,” he said.
Mr Bode said the study looked at 808 partnered young adults, aged 18-25, across 33 different countries, who were in the first two years of love.
“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,” he said.
“Our study suggests that people from more gender-equal countries experience a lower intensity of romantic love, obsessive thinking, and maybe even commitment.”
Mr Bode said romantic love was under-researched given its importance in family and romantic relationship formation, its influence on culture, and its proposed universality.
He said the overall findings suggested that any sex differences in romantic love were explained not only by biological sex, but also by the evolutionary pressures humans faced in their ancestral environment.
“For example, men in our study generally fell in love one month sooner than women. This may be because men are more commonly required to show their commitment to win over a partner,” Mr Bode said.
Read the full study: Sex differences in romantic love: an evolutionary perspective.
