Among Americans’ favorite romantic comedies are “Pretty Woman,” “Sleepless in Seattle” and “Sixteen Candles,” according to a series of 2023 YouGov polls.
In those and the many romcoms like them, the plot is fairly simple: The female lead pines after a man, they end up together, often after a series of kooky encounters. The end. The trope echoes a long-held belief about male-female dynamics.
“There’s kind of a stereotype out there that women want or need relationships more than men,” says Justin Lehmiller, senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, “and that women would be more inclined to commit faster to a relationship.”
But a recent DatingNews.com and Kinsey Institute study of 2,000 U.S. singles refutes that claim.
More than a quarter, 28.6% of men would speed up their move-in timeline in a relationship and 18.8% would marry sooner, according to the study. That’s as compared to 18.8% of women who’d move in faster and 13.7% who’d marry sooner.
According to Kinsey’s findings, their motivating factor is financial: More men would speed up these milestones to save money.
And that should come as no surprise, given the current economic climate, with job openings and hiring slowing and tariffs pushing prices higher. But, experts say there’s more to it.
There’s kind of a stereotype out there that women want or need relationships more than men.
Justin Lehmiller
Senior research fellow, Kinsey Institute
For heterosexual men in particular, “romantic relationships really become their primary source of social and emotional support,” says Lehmiller. “And so when men don’t have that in their lives, we see that their levels of psychological well-being are lower.”
It’s a trend Geoff MacDonald, scholar of singlehood and a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, knows well. MacDonald’s MacLab focuses on wellbeing in singlehood and has found that women are more likely to be happy single than men.
“Women are just better at getting that kind of support through their friendships and through their family relationships,” MacDonald says. “Men tend to struggle with that more on their own.”
That could be as a result of cultural pressure, Lehmiller says.
Traditional notions of masculinity “restrict when and how men are able to express their emotions,” he says. “So they don’t tend to get as close to their male friends or to have other people in their lives that they have close intimate relationships with.”
Romantic relationships help men meet those needs.
Researchers aren’t the only ones seeing men’s eagerness to couple up. Kyle Scheinkman has been working at relationship coaching company Relationship Hero since 2018, first as a coach to clients and now as the director of coaching.
The company’s 100 or so coaches primarily offer services within the romantic relationship context, from relationship strengthening to help for those looking to find a partner.
“Generally speaking, men are more likely to sign up for coaching,” he says. “They’re more likely to have more sessions and to spend more on coaching in the long run.”
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