Men More Likely to Say 'I Love You' First in Relationships

But the authors say it's because men need sex to feel connected to their partners, so the "I love you" simply feeds the woman's need for intimacy before having sex - seems like a rather dismal view of both sexes to me.

I think women are more wary of making that emotional commitment these days, and I also think men are much more romantic or relational (to use the academic term) than most people (especially academics) give us credit. Add to the mix the reality that many men do not have close male friends and the need for romantic intimacy in men begins to make a lot more sense.

We need connection and relationship maybe even more than women.

Study: Men More Likely to Say 'I Love You' First in Relationships

By: Erica Ho

While men often receive the short end of the stick, being stereotyped as commitment-phobic, they're certainly not shy about letting their feelings be made known.

A study appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that found that two-thirds of men in heterosexual relationships said those three little words first, often a full six weeks before the woman.

But Dr. Laura Berman, who penned the piece in the Chicago Sun-Times, cautions against the motivations behind saying “I love you” first, as men tend to like to hear it before a couple has had sex.

She mentions, “…[the man] offers intimacy because he wants sex, and she offers sex because she wants intimacy… Men often require sex to feel intimate with their partner, while women require just the opposite.”

Ahh, politics of the sexes. What can we say? It's complicated. But as most committed couples are likely to tell you, in the end it doesn't really matter who said it first.

Tags: men, women, relationships, love, sex, psychology, Dr. Laura Berman, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, gender roles, stereotypes, intimacy, Erica Ho, Time Magazine