Across many cultures, romantic love and passion play a central role in how couples form and sustain their relationships. A desire for stable social bonds, including romantic ties, is nearly universal. A declaration of love often marks a turning point, signaling readiness for deeper involvement, a greater sense of mutual responsibility, and the possibility of a future that includes marriage and children.
Declarations of love typically arise in moments of uncertainty and carry risks. If feelings are not reciprocated or if affection has waned, individuals may face rejection and miss opportunities to grow closer. Research into behavioral dynamics in romantic interactions has found gender-based differences that can influence how partnerships develop over time.
Two theoretical lenses help explain these patterns: the error management theory and the parental investment theory.
Error management theory posits that decisions under uncertainty can lead to errors. Human thinking has evolved so that when the choice is between surviving or reproducing, one tends to favor the cheaper option. Optimism lowers the chance of costly mistakes while taking action, talking, or thinking about what to do, compared with doing nothing. Cognitive slips are more tolerable when it is easier to avoid an action than to pursue it.
Parental investment theory suggests that the sex contributing more resources to offspring tends to be choosier in selecting a mate, while the less-investing sex often competes with others of the same sex for mating opportunities. Women frequently bear greater biological and social responsibilities, given pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding, which can shape their mating choices and resource allocation.
Much of the existing data come from the United States, leaving questions about how these theories apply elsewhere. An international team of researchers led by evolutionary psychologist Christopher Watkins, based at the University of Abertay in the United Kingdom, sought to fill this knowledge gap. They detailed their findings in a journal article in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
To gather data, researchers conducted interviews with nearly 1,500 volunteers from Australia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, France, Poland, and the United Kingdom. Participants provided demographic details for both partners, including gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, country of birth, and current residence. They also described which partner confessed love first in both current and prior relationships and assessed the strength of their commitment to the partner.
The results showed that men tended to be the first to declare love in most countries, with France as a notable exception where both sexes admitted love at roughly equal rates for both heterosexual and non-heterosexual relationships. Both men and women in the study indicated an expectation that the confession would occur around the same time, roughly 70 to 75 days into a relationship. In terms of overall timing, men tended to express love around day 107 of sexual activity, while women tended to do so around day 122. The joy felt upon being recognized by a beloved was similar for both genders. In countries with a larger female population, men were somewhat more likely to declare love first. Additionally, partners who avoided romantic closeness tended to react less positively to a love confession from the other person.
The study concludes that men are often the ones to initiate love declarations, while women may share a similar emotional rhythm. As the researchers caution, cultural universals in romantic passion and expression exist, yet individual tendencies shape how love is spoken and felt. The authors emphasize that romantic love is a universal experience and that both expressing and feeling love contribute to the quality of intimate relationships.
Across nearly every culture examined, men were more likely to say I love you before women, and both genders were less satisfied by an I love you that contradicts their own preferences for romantic distance. These findings echo earlier work conducted in the United States, suggesting a broader pattern across diverse societies. The researchers acknowledge that the study did not include Asian and African cultures with distinct social norms, and they propose future research to explore whether communities with more collectivist, communal orientations exhibit different patterns of love declarations.
In sum, the study highlights how romantic expression varies with gender and cultural context while underscoring a shared human experience: love and passion are enduring features of intimate life, expressed in predictable ways that reflect underlying social and evolutionary dynamics. Further international investigations may illuminate how collectivist values shape the timing and manner of declarations of love in different regions.