When it comes to matters of the heart, men are from Mars and women are from Venus – or so the popular theory goes.
And now the differences between men and women in love have been laid bare by scientists.
They say men become besotted with their partners a month earlier in a relationship than women – and are likely to make the first move to say ‘I love you’.
They also fall in love, on average, more often. But it might come as little surprise that women are more committed and have more intense romantic feelings once those feelings have cemented, spending more than half of their waking hours thinking about their partners.
Researchers from the n National University say the differences may be down to innate priorities: men are driven by the need to have many different partners, while women are choosier and are searching for ‘quality’ over quantity in a relationship.
Researchers quizzed more than 800 people aged 18 to 25 who were in love in a romantic relationship.
They found that men had been in love around 12 per cent more often than women – an average 2.6 times compared to 2.3.
Men were also nearly twice as likely than women to fall in love before a relationship officially began. They also fell in love more quickly – on average, one month earlier than women.
Men were nearly twice as likely than women to fall in love before a relationship officially began (stock image)
Researchers quizzed more than 800 people aged 18 to 25 who were in love in a romantic relationship (stock image)
Women are more cautious, and take an average of 1.92 months to develop intense feelings. But once those feelings start, women thought about their loved one 54 per cent of their waking hours (stock image)
Women are more cautious, and take an average of 1.92 months to develop intense feelings. But once those feelings start, women thought about their loved one 54 per cent of their waking hours, compared to 44 per cent for men.
‘Falling in love one month earlier provides men with a greater opportunity to use romantic love to promote courtship, to demonstrate romantic love as an honest signal of commitment,’ write the researchers in the journal Biology of Sex Differences.
‘Men will have fallen in love sooner than females because the male fitness landscape favours quantity of potential mates over quality, whereas the opposite is true for females.
‘All of this is consistent with the sex difference in partner selection, with females being choosier than males.’