Ask most people who falls in love faster and the answer comes back almost universally: women. Apparently, we’re the romantics. Well worn stereotypes would say we’re the ones who catch feelings first, who lie awake replaying conversations, who know after the second date whether this is something real.
Except, according to the science, that’s almost entirely wrong.
Speaking on the Australian Women’s Weekly Love Stories podcast, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, Australia’s most beloved science communicator, laid out the research with characteristic directness. Men, it turns out, tend to fall in love earlier than women. And they say ‘I love you’ first.
“Men tend to say the ‘I love you’ phrase a bit earlier than the women do, by about 10 to 15 days,” Dr Karl told host Tiffany Dunk. “And we did find that the men tend to fall in love a bit earlier than women at roughly around the three month mark.”
How long does it take to fall in love?
The three-month mark is striking in its specificity. Drawn from peer-reviewed research into Western relationship patterns, at around the 90-day point, men in these studies were more likely than their female partners to be experiencing and expressing genuine feelings of love.
Dr Karl is careful to contextualise the finding. “You have to look at each group of humans and they vary enormously with their culture, their traditions,” he noted. “If you pick one society, you then go in and do an announcement, but on average it turns out that men fall… it’s about three months.”
The caveat matters. These studies primarily captured educated, relatively affluent Western participants, a narrow demographic from which to draw universal conclusions. As Dr Karl points out, in much of the world, researchers are understandably focused on more pressing public health priorities than the precise timeline of romantic attachment.
“Men tend to say the ‘I love you’ phrase a bit earlier than the women do, by about 10 to 15 days. And men tend to fall in love a bit earlier than women, at roughly around the three month mark.”
Why might men fall in love faster than women?
The science doesn’t offer a single clean explanation, and Dr Karl is refreshingly honest about the limits of what we know. The brain, he frequently emphasises, is staggeringly complex. Thousands of hormones and neurotransmitters are involved in the experience of love, and reducing the whole thing to dopamine and serotonin tells only a tiny fraction of the story.
That said, several theories have been proposed. One is evolutionary: historically, men faced greater competition for mates and may have developed faster attachment mechanisms to secure a partner. Another is social: women, who have traditionally had more to risk from a relationship, including physical safety, financial dependency, and the responsibilities of pregnancy, may have evolved greater caution before committing emotionally.
A third explanation is simply socialisation. Women are more practised at examining and naming their emotional states. Men, often less so. It’s possible men feel love earlier but women are better at recognising and articulating when it has arrived.
What about arranged marriages? Do they change the timeline?
One of the more surprising things Dr Karl raised on the podcast is that arranged marriages, in which partners often begin with little or no romantic feeling, frequently have lower divorce rates than non-arranged marriages in comparable populations.
It’s a data point that complicates any simple narrative about love needing to strike fast, or at all, before commitment. In many parts of the world, love is understood not as a precondition for partnership but as something that develops within it gradually, through shared life, mutual care, and time.
Which raises a question worth sitting with: in Western culture, is the pressure to feel love quickly and to know by the three-month mark actually serving us?
Does it matter who says ‘I love you’ first?
Research suggests it might, but perhaps not in the ways we expect. Studies have found that women tend to be more cautious about saying ‘I love you’ first, weighing up whether the feeling is real, whether the timing is right, whether saying it first makes them vulnerable. Men, apparently, are less encumbered by this calculation.
Dr Karl acknowledges only one study on the timing gap has been fully replicated, and he hasn’t seen comprehensive follow-up research. As with much in the science of love, the honest answer is: we know more than we used to, but far less than we think.
What is clear is that the popular image of men as emotionally unavailable and slow to commit endlessly waiting while women fall first is not well supported by the data. If anything, the research suggests the reverse.
What is the science of falling in love?
Dr Karl’s broader point about love’s chemistry is worth noting here. When we talk about falling in love, we’re describing a state in which thousands of brain chemicals are doing things we barely understand. “People just say, oh, I have fallen in love because of dopamine or serotonin,” he said. “We don’t know. The brain is way too complex.”
What we do know is that falling in love activates the brain’s reward system, suppresses regions associated with critical social assessment (which is partly why new love makes us slightly irrational), and triggers the release of oxytocin — the bonding hormone — alongside a cocktail of other neurochemicals that produce the giddy, obsessive, all-consuming feeling the early months of love are famous for.
Interestingly, that chemical storm typically settles after roughly — you guessed it — around three months. Which might be exactly why the three-month mark shows up so consistently in the love research. It’s when the neurochemical fog begins to lift, and what’s underneath either holds, or it doesn’t.
Frequently asked questions:
Do men fall in love faster than women?
Research from peer-reviewed studies of Western populations suggests yes, men tend to experience and express love earlier than women, typically around the three-month mark. Men are also more likely to say ‘I love you’ first, on average about 10 to 15 days before their female partners.
How long does it take to fall in love?
Based on available research, men in Western populations tend to fall in love at around three months into a relationship. Women may take slightly longer. However, these findings apply to a specific cultural context and don’t reflect universal human experience in many cultures, love is understood to develop gradually within a committed relationship rather than preceding it.
Why do men say ‘I love you’ first?
Research suggests men tend to say ‘I love you’ earlier than women, by roughly 10 to 15 days on average. Theories include evolutionary explanations around mate-securing behaviour, and social ones around women being more cautious about emotional vulnerability. The science doesn’t yet offer a definitive answer.
Is there a formula for falling in love?
Dr Karl’s answer is a clear no, though patterns do exist. Love involves thousands of neurochemicals and hormones, varies enormously across cultures, and is influenced by personal history, attachment style, and circumstances. The three-month timeline is a statistical average from a narrow population, not a universal rule.
Do arranged marriages last longer than love marriages?
Some research suggests arranged marriages in certain populations have lower divorce rates than non-arranged ones. This may reflect cultural, religious, or social factors around commitment and support structures, rather than the presence or absence of romantic love at the start. The picture is complex and varies significantly between communities.
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