Why Men Are More Likely To Fall In Love Harder And Faster Than Women

There’s a common misconception women are crazy, running around looking for men to pour all our love into, dupe into a relationship and all but smother with possession and affection. And men? Men are empty.

Any woman who's been in a relationship, however, knows this image of the woman is completely falsified.

If anything, it’s just another way men have turned the roles around and tried to trick us into forgetting the truth. What's the truth? Women are the cool, calm and collected ones and men are the ones declaring their love and crying for devotion and affection.

According to Marissa Harrison, a psychologist from Pennsylvania State University, women are much more cautious when it comes to love and men have a tendency to fall in -- hard and fast.

In a study published in the Journal of Social Psychology, Harrison asked 172 college students if they’d ever been in love.

If participants answered yes, she asked how long it took them to say “I love you.” Not surprisingly, men were prone to say it much faster than women, declaring their love after just a few weeks compared to women, who took a few months.

But the real question we have is: Why? Why are men falling in love faster than women? Why are the usually emotionless, stone-cold-repressed-feelings “macho men” of the world weeping like the star of a Nicholas Sparks novel?

Why does the one group of people who professes its callousness and determination to remain single always end up falling so damn hard?

For all the women out there who've been in a relationship and witnessed the beautiful and surprising transformation of a calloused bachelor into a gushing, love-sick mess, you already understand why men fall much harder than women.

They’ve spent their lives suppressing emotions.

Once a pipe bursts, it’s almost impossible to stop the flow. Men are the same way.

For years, they’ve been bottling up their emotions, pushing away any type of maternal guidance and ignoring their urge for nurture.

Once they get it, however, they can’t live without it anymore. They’ve let everything out, and they’ll be damned if they’re going to put it back in again.

Men are much more territorial than women.

Women may have a harder time with the chase, but men have a harder time with the hold. Men may be harder to catch, but once they're caught, they're impossible to shake.

They become territorial over their partners the same way they once did their independence and their bachelor pads.

They like to display ownership and power, while also relinquishing all their emotional control.

They don’t question their emotions -- and they don’t have their emotions questioned.

Unlike women, who are taught to question every thought and feeling, men go with their gut and trust it instinctively. They weren’t raised to wonder if they’re being “too emotional” or acting “crazy.”

They don’t have to explain their feelings or second-guess them because they’ve never been told those feelings are wrong. Thus, men don't second-guess when they're in love.

They never wonder if those strong feelings of love are really just lust or their attachment is really just a temporary lid on a void they're looking to fill.

They haven’t experienced this type of connection before.

Women have close, emotional connections with one another all the time. The friendship between women is a very deep and passionate one. Men, on the other hand, are cold and tempered around their friends.

They don’t get deep, emotional or "gushy" with one another. They don't tell each other their innermost secrets and desires, and they don't share feelings and advice.

When they finally experience the connection women expect from every relationship, they have a hard time letting it go.

They want to be like their dad, but still need their mom.

You don’t need to be Freud to recognize men never stop loving their mothers. You can’t possibly be raised and carried by someone for so long and then just stop craving that sort of affection and love.

Men may want to act like the strong, proud fathers they grew up admiring, but they really just want to be the little boy who is taken care of again.

They have two heads to think with.

The two-headed monster has a lot to gain from the relationship. While women may sometimes think in terms of sex, the desire to “mark their territory” and "hold on to what they've claimed" is not the same as it is with men.

Men, on the other hand, "claim" women both mentally and sexually.