(Almost) Everything You Need to Know About How Men and Women Differ in Romantic Relationships

Who falls in love faster? Confesses “I love you” sooner? Benefits more from relationships? Suffers worse from breakups?

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Instead of crunching mountains of economic data, what if we just asked people, “On a scale from 0 to 10, how’s life treating you?” Well, a massive study with over 700,000 participants found that a single question about well-being is a more powerful predictor than a slew of economic indicators (e.g., income, education, age) when it comes to predicting major life outcomes that happen years later - whether someone will move, end their romantic relationship, change jobs, or end up in the hospital. A gut-feeling number might be the ultimate life crystal ball!

Well-being matters. And yet, the field is a total mess. So I decided to make sense of it, tackling one specific area…

For centuries, we’ve been fed a simple story: women are the emotional ones, the nurturers, the seekers of deep, committed love, while men—hapless, beer-clutching, commitment-phobic creatures—must be dragged into relationships like a toddler into a bath. But what if, scientifically speaking, men need romantic relationships more than women do…