Also, men admit thinking about confessing love six weeks earlier than their female partners.
Taking an “evolutionary-economics” perspective, the research concludes gender differences in the timing and function of saying I love you are related to whether a couple has had sex, reports Chicago Tribune. “Men may be more impulsive in the way they express love, but what love means to men and what love means to women may be very different,” said co-author Josh Ackerman, assistant professor of marketing at MIT Sloan School of Management.
In a series of surveys, researchers found that two-thirds of couples report that the man was first in confessing love.
Men also reported being significantly happier than women to hear I love you one month into the relationship if they had not yet had sex, while women felt happier than men when they heard I love you after the onset of sex in the relationship.
The researchers theorised that a pre-sex love confession may signal interest in advancing the relationship to include sexual activity, while women took I love you post-sex as a signal of commitment.
