Fools of love: men fall faster than women, study shows

Men fall in love slightly more often than women, but women obsess about their partner more than men, according to a first-of-its-kind study investigating the differences between sexes from The Australian National University (ANU). 

Lead author and ANU PhD student, Adam Bode, said that while previous studies have researched the difference in romantic love between the sexes, this is 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. 

“The study spans across 33 different countries in Europe, North America and South Africa.  “We’re most interested in whether biological sex influences the occurrence, progression, and expression of romantic love.” 

The study grouped 808 partnered young adults aged 18-25 who were in the first two years of love, comparing the sexes on:  

• the number of times they had been in love 
• when they fell in love  
• the intensity of love 
• how much they obsessed about their partner, and 
• commitment levels. 

The results revealed that men fall in love, on average, about one month earlier than women, women experience romantic love slightly more intensely, and women think about their loved ones more than men.  

“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 said. 

“Our study suggests that people from more gender-equal countries experience a lower intensity of romantic love, obsessive thinking, and maybe even commitment.” 

The study uses data from the Romantic Love Survey 2022, the world’s largest dataset of 1,556 young adults experiencing romantic love, which was made available to researchers around the world last year. 

“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,” Bode said.

The overall findings suggest that any sex differences in romantic love are 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,” Bode said. 

“A large proportion of participants (over 39 per cent) of both sexes fell in love after forming a romantic relationship. 

“These new insights into whether sex differences in romantic love truly exist will help develop future theories about the evolution of romantic love.”  

The full study has been published in Biology of Sex Differences.