The words “I love you” is symbolic as it represents romantic devotion; a desire to bring the relationship to a higher, more serious level. It is no wonder that saying it for the first time in a relationship can be daunting.
A common perception is that men are likely to exercise caution in the use of such words while women, who are thought to have stronger feelings of love, are likelier to be first to profess love in heterosexual romantic relationships.
Yet a study on romantic commitment from an evolutionary-economics perspective by associate professor of psychology Norman Li from SMU's School of Social Sciences and his two co-authors found that men are more likely to make the first move.
Furthermore, the onset of sexual activity also influences how a recipient might react to a three-worded confession as such.
In their paper “Let’s Get Serious: Communicating Commitment In Romantic Relationships”, the authors said that an evolutionary perspective has been “particularly fruitful (in research) in accounting for the costs and benefits underlying specific patterns of romantic behaviour” and based their hypotheses from several principles in economics and evolutionary biology. The paper was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
An Evolutionary-Economics Perspective on Romantic Commitment
The first principle the authors considered in the paper is parental investment, which states that because reproductive success is the primary driver of natural selection, the biological sex that makes the greater 'minimum obligatory investment' (typically females) in conceiving will tend to be more romantically choosy than the other sex.
Building on this idea of discrepancy in romantic choosiness between the sexes is the sexual selection principle which explains that because women have more to lose than men by making poor mating choices, they have a stronger motivation to choose carefully and wisely.
Explaining why other relationship transition points, such as meeting the parents, cohabitation and marriage, are “unlikely” to be as critical to sex differences in relationship commitment as is the onset of sexual activity, the authors said “sexual intercourse represents the core event for which parental investment pressures are relevant”.
“Meeting a romantic partner’s parents may feel like a big step in a relationship, but it plays a comparatively minor role in terms of the minimum obligatory costs a person must expend in fertilisation and child rearing,” they added.
And because committed, long-term relationships often involve sexual activity, “confessions of love may be used to achieve sexual access by (truthfully or insincerely) announcing long-term romantic interest.”
This assessment suggests that men will be relatively more interested in seeking this access at the outset of a relationship, led the authors to hypothesise that men would likelier confess love first in relationships.
A series of surveys were conducted among individuals and couples to collect responses about perceptions of romantic relationships to test the hypotheses. The authors found that 70 percent of the couples reported that it was the man who had confessed love first.
“Stereotypic beliefs can lead to inaccurate impressions about early commitment behaviours”, the authors wrote: So contrary to the belief that women might be more keen to pledge love and commitment, it is, in fact, men who are more likely to do so first – albeit to encourage sexual activity. Women, on the other hand, may prefer to delay such expressions until they have evaluated their partners satisfactorily – to avoid the potential 'costs' of saying "I love you" to an incompatible person.
When is a good time to say “I love you’?
While the common perception may be that women tend to feel happier than men when they are told “I love you” for the first time in a relationship, an evolutionary-economics perspective suggests otherwise.
The authors said that reactions to love confessions should “critically depend” on if confession took place before or after the exchange of sexual and parental investment resources in the relationship.
“If love confessions are bids for sexual access, then women should respond less positively than men to confessions that occur prior to the onset of sexual activity in a relationship… In relationships in which sex occurs before love is confessed, they should be more motivated to seek investment, potentially in the form of commitment,” they wrote.
This would mean that women should feel more positive about receiving a post-sex than a pre-sex confession of love while men are likely to respond better to pre-sex confessions as they may perceive them as “signals of sexual opportunity”.
The authors’ submission was backed up by their survey results which showed that male respondents exhibited less happiness in response to hearing “I love you” after sex had occurred in a relationship versus before sex. In contrast, the female respondents showed a higher level of happiness when they are told “I love you” after sex.
The author’s reiterated that while these patterns are inconsistent with the belief-based prediction that women would generally be happier than men to receive confessions, the findings are consistent with an evolutionary-economics perspective.
“That is, because sexual activity is necessarily associated with the high costs of female parental care, women likely possess adaptive biases to be cautious of initialising sexual relations… Men, on the other hand, incur greater parental investment costs from missing potential reproductive opportunities.”
Drawing on an evolutionary-economics perspective, it follows that “a particular chronic mating strategy often associated with, but not exclusive to, men may drive responses to and judgments of love confessions as a function of whether sex has occurred”.
The authors added that men who are interested in short-term romance should be most happy about pre-sex confessions while those interested in a longer term relationship would be more interested in post-sex confessions.
To say or not to say?
Much has been written on the art of expressing love and when one should muster the courage to say “I love you”. Findings from this study "complement existing research on romantic turning points" and help shed light on the "hidden meanings, motivations, and mistakes associated with expressions of romantic commitment", the authors said.
Future research might consider the channels from which love and commitment are expressed. With the advent of various forms of electronic mediums, more and more people may be inclined to profess love via email, text messages and social networking sites, as opposed to saying it in person.
“Research on the medium of such communications may highlight modern influences on relationship turning points”, they added.
Differences in the willingness to express and respond positively to love can promote misunderstandings and discord too. These problems can manifest emotionally or through errors of judgement.
“For example, people may develop the mistaken belief that romantic partners are more interested in either sex or commitment than they actually are,” the authors wrote.
So what should a person looking to confess love do?
Li's advice: “First and foremost, don't think too much about it… Follow your feelings. Say “I love you” when you feel it is right. Otherwise, just be mindful that saying it first (if you are female) indicates to your partner that you may be ready for sex, and saying it after sexual relations have commenced (if you are male) indicates an intention for a long-term relationship."