Men more romantic than women: study

Rarely accused of being romantics, men get their due in a new study that finds husbands are just as likely as wives to express love through affection. In fact, when it comes to the range of behaviours used to flaunt their fondest feelings, they actually exceed women.

Initiating intimacy, sharing leisure activities and performing household chores as a couple were all ways in which men communicated love. Women, by contrast, did so by being less negative and antagonistic.

In other words, if sex is male shorthand for a sonnet, females bare their amorous hearts by not saying, "Do the damn dishes already!"

The study, to appear in the November issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, was conducted over 13 years with 168 married men and women in the U.S.

The first wave of data was collected within two months of a couple's wedding, the second and third waves at yearly intervals and the final wave after 13 years of marriage.

Women emerged as emotional climate-keepers, cultivating a warm environment, not just with affection but also with restraint -- both in what they said and did.

For example, when it came to sex, being in love actually made wives less likely to initiate things in the bedroom.

"It's possible that women are being less self-assertive when they're in love, allowing their husband to play the role of the sexual initiator," said lead author Elizabeth Schoenfeld, a doctoral candidate in human development and family sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.

"But it's also possible that women who are less in love will initiate sex more because they're trying to increase intimacy in the relationship."

Men in love were likely to involve their wives in their leisure activities, initiate sex (men are four times likelier to see sex as an act of love), and perform household labour together. But it seemed to be the "companionate nature" of housework that mattered, not the chores themselves.

"What we're seeing is that it's not so much that men are doing things for their partner as they're doing things with their partner. If the wife is washing her car, he'll pitch in," said Schoenfeld. "Sharing activities and household tasks is what really seems to be connected to men's love."

Contrary to stereotype, both genders were equally likely to communicate love for their partner through affection: think compliments, hugs and kisses, expressions of approval, and saying, "I love you."

Schoenfeld said society has long taken a "feminized view" of love -- one that overlooks men's more activity-oriented approach -- and that it's likely affecting husbands' perceptions of how they should act in a relationship.

"Because it's shown that way in the media, and shown that way in popular literature, it may have now seeped into men's understanding that this is the socially appropriate, recognizable way of expressing love," said Schoenfeld.

She noted the take-home is that approaches to love and marriage are more nuanced than previously thought, with gender differences being "a job for the scalpel, not the sword."

-- Postmedia News

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 11, 2012 A13