20 June,2011 08:44 AM IST | | Agencies
A study has found that though men are the first to say 'I love you', taking almost three months to profess their emotions, women generally mistrust them and prefer males who wait long to get serious about a relationship.
When researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S. questioned 45 men and women, most thought women were first to introduce the topic.
But when they quizzed others about current and past relationships, they revealed the opposite to be true, with the man saying the phrase first 61.5 per cent of the time.
Men began thinking about professing their love 97.3 days into a relationship - six weeks earlier than women.
"If we were to rely on the traditional stereotype that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, we would expect that this act typically falls on the shoulders of women," the Daily Mail quoted researchers as saying.
"Indeed, people's beliefs about the association between women and love support this idea," they said.
"Yet these beliefs may not reflect the romantic reality. When examining what actually happened in their past and current relationships, it was men who were more likely to confess love first," they said.
"This was not simply a function of women waiting for their partners to make the first move - men first considered expressing their feelings six weeks before women did," they added.
However, they felt that one important reason behind men approaching the woman early could be their strong 'desire to motivate early sexual activity in relationships.'
The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
