Men say “I love you” before women do: Robust across several countries

Oncefa2 · 2022-04-14T05:49:46+00:00

Abstract

Feeling and expressing love is at the core of romantic relationships, but individuals differ in their proclivity to worry about their relationships and/or avoid intimacy. Saying “I love you” signals a commitment to a future with our romantic partner. Contrary to gender stereotypes, research in the United States demonstrates that men are more likely to confess love first. We aimed to replicate this sex difference in an online cross-national sample (seven countries, three continents), while testing for variation according to attachment style and environment (the national sex ratio). Men were more likely to confess love first in a relationship, with preliminary evidence that this was more likely when men had more choice (more female-biased sex ratio). Independent of biological sex, highly avoidant respondents were less happy to hear “I love you” than less avoidant respondents, and highly anxious respondents were happier to hear “I love you” than less anxious respondents. Our findings suggest that prior observations generalize beyond an ethnically homogenous sample and incorporate attachment theory into the study of love confessions. Our research suggests a dissociation between initial declarations of love (moderated by biological sex) and emotional responses to love confessions, moderated by attachment style but not by biological sex.

A key finding is that men and women fall in love and even think about telling their partners that they love them at about the same time in a relationship. So men do not fall in love faster. Instead what this study found is that men open up about their feelings before women do. This contradicts the notion that men bottle things up, as well as the notion that women are more emotional.

Here is a pop science article discussing the findings:

https://www.psypost.org/2022/04/results-from-three-continents-indicate-that-men-tend-to-say-i-love-you-before-women-do-62873

Only_one_in_ur_mom · 2022-04-14T20:05:25+00:00

This is because women are too nervous to ruin the relationship

Title	Men say “I love you” before women do: Robust across several countries
Author	Oncefa2
Upvotes	12
Comments	4
Date	April 14, 2022 5:44 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/Male_Studies
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/Male_Studies/comments/u3a9xp/men_say_i_love_you_before_women_do_robust_across/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/Male_Studies/men-say-i-love-you-before-women-do-robust-across.1215925 https://theredarchive.com/post/1215925

Comments