News Tonight

After all this time of believing that women are the romantic ones, researchers at the Pennsylvania State University in the US tell us that the system now works in a different way.

According to Marissa Harrison, who is a psychologist at the university, women are the ones who tent to keep their feelings under wraps when it comes to romance. The study, which was published in the Journal of Social Psychology, said that men would more often fall in love within a few weeks as compared to women who would take months or more.

It was also found that men were more likely to reveal to their partner about how they felt way before women did.

The study was based on interviews with 172 college going students. They were asked if they had even been in love and if so, how long it had taken them to realize the significance of their feelings towards their partners.

They were also asked how deeply involved they were in the relationship before they frankly affirmed their feelings. The reports said that men fell in love sooner than women and were three times more likely than women to have said ‘I love you’ first.

Harrison concluded that women happen to be more practical about their associations with love than what the society believes to be. They probably are not the ones who would rush into a relationship or wear their hearts on their sleeves.

She says, “Perhaps women are perceived as less rational about love because they have a greater capacity for processing emotional experiences. It can be argued that men's falling in love and exclaiming this love first may be a by-product of them equating love with sexual desire”.

Research has shown that love and sexual desire are two very different feelings.