Do Men and Women Show Love Differently in Marriage?

Abstract

In Western societies, women are considered more adept than men at expressing love in romantic relationships. Although scholars have argued that this view of love gives short shrift to men’s ways of showing love (e.g., Cancian, 1986; Noller, 1996), the widely embraced premise that men and women “love differently” has rarely been examined empirically. Using data collected at four time points over 13 years of marriage, the authors examined whether love is associated with different behaviors for husbands and wives. Multilevel analyses revealed that, counter to theoretical expectations, both genders were equally likely to show love through affection. But whereas wives expressed love by enacting fewer negative or antagonistic behaviors, husbands showed love by initiating sex, sharing leisure activities, and doing household work together with their wives. Overall, the findings indicate that men and women show their love in more nuanced ways than cultural stereotypes suggest.

Keywords

love gender differences marriage socioemotional behavior companionship

In Western societies, women are usually viewed as more adept than men at expressing love in romantic relationships. This notion was perhaps best articulated by sociologist Francesca Cancian (1986), who summarized the prevailing view as follows:

[In the United States, we] identify love with emotional expression and talking about feelings, aspects of love that women prefer and in which women tend to be more skilled than men . . . This feminized perspective leads us to believe that women are much more capable of love than men and that the way to make relationships more loving is for men to become more like women. (p. 692)

Cancian (1986), among others (e.g., Noller, 1996, Wood & Inman, 1993), argued that society’s feminized view of love overlooks the activity-oriented manifestations of love that men prefer, such as having sex, doing leisure activities together, and helping with household tasks. These scholars suggest that, rather than differing in their ability to love, men and women have different styles of expressing love in intimate relationships. Specifically, whereas a woman may show her love by sharing her feelings or giving hugs and kisses, a man may show love by washing the dishes, initiating sex, or spending free time with his partner.

The general public has eagerly embraced this view that men and women “love differently,” as reflected by the popular success of books such as Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (Gray, 1992) and You Just Don’t Understand (Tannen, 1990). Such books tend to emphasize and greatly exaggerate the differences between the sexes, claiming that “[n]ot only do men and women communicate differently, but they think, feel, perceive, react, respond, love, need and appreciate differently” (Gray, 1992, p. 5). These ideas have penetrated mainstream thought and culture; as Wood (2002) succinctly put it in her critique of the Mars–Venus dichotomy, “Gray’s views of women and men are widely bought . . . both literally and figuratively” (p. 202).

Despite its popularity, remarkably few studies have actually tested the idea that men and women show love differently. Although theory and research suggest that men and women differ somewhat in the ways they relate to others (e.g., Archer, 1996; Bakan, 1966; Spence & Buckner, 2000), it is unclear whether these differences reflect gendered ways of showing love. The current research seeks to fill this gap by examining whether men and women express love in stereotypically “masculine” and “feminine” ways. Prior theoretical work suggests that men and women who are in love may differentially engage in affectionate, accommodative, sexual, companionate, and instrumental behaviors (e.g., Cancian, 1986); the present study tests this notion directly by investigating gender differences in the link between love and behavior in a sample of married couples.

Theoretical Perspectives

Social scientists have relied primarily on two theoretical perspectives to account for sex differences in mating behavior (Eagly & Wood, 1999), both of which hypothesize that men and women express love in gender-specific ways. According to sociostructural perspectives, gender differences in behavior result from status and power differences that affect men and women on a day-to-day basis (e.g., Eagly & Wood, 1999; Wood & Eagly, 2002). In Western culture, men traditionally have been regarded as providers, whereas women have been seen as specializing in domestic matters. Such role assignments have led to widely held beliefs about how men and women “ought” to behave and specify the qualities they “should” possess to successfully enact their sex-specific positions in society (Eagly & Wood, 1999; Rudman & Glick, 2008). Specifically, men are stereotyped as agentic, assertive, and group-oriented, and women tend to be viewed as kind, communal (i.e., selfless and responsive), and emotionally expressive (Bakan, 1966; Spence & Buckner, 2000). Because men and women are rewarded for conforming to traditional gender roles and expectations (e.g., Wood & Eagly, 2002), they learn to exhibit stereotypically “male” and “female” attributes across domains (Eagly, 1987), including romantic relationships. Sociocultural theory suggests that women’s tendency to be expressive, caring, and selfless primes them to express love through affectionate or accommodating behaviors, whereas men’s activity- and group-oriented propensities lead them to show their love in more instrumental or companionate (i.e., companionship-focused) ways—that is, by doing things for or with their partner (e.g., Cancian, 1986; Wood & Inman, 1993).

Evolutionary theorists, on the other hand, argue that differences in the ways men and women behave in relationships are biologically induced and stem from fundamental sex differences in human mating (Buss, 1988). Specifically, evolutionary theory posits that romantic behavior is driven by gender-specific mating strategies that evolved over time to maximize reproductive potential (e.g., Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Because women must invest more time and energy than men to ensure their offspring’s survival, they are motivated to cultivate men’s emotional investment in the relationship and thereby secure a long-term commitment. On the other hand, given that men can successfully pass on their genes through a single sexual encounter, a short-term mating strategy focused on securing sexual partners is often more advantageous (Buss, 2006). Thus, to compete with other men for access to willing females, men are thought to have evolved dominant, competitive tendencies, whereas women, given their caregiving responsibilities and need for men’s provision, have evolved to be more nurturing and emotionally responsive.

According to evolutionary theorists, feelings of romantic love are filtered through men’s and women’s evolved relational dispositions, which, in turn, influence the ways they show their love (Buss, 1988). Specifically, evolutionary theory proposes that men’s dominant, competitive nature predisposes them to express their love by making sexual advances and investing time and resources in their partners to demonstrate that they are capable providers, whereas women’s tendency to nurture predisposes them to show love by being affectionate and attentive. Thus, although sociostructural and evolutionary theorists disagree as to the origins of sex-differentiated behavior, the two perspectives make remarkably similar predictions about the nature of these differences, such that women are expected to be more likely than men to express love by maintaining a warm emotional climate in their relationships and men are expected to be more likely than women to show love by initiating sex and engaging in instrumental or companionate behaviors.

Prior Empirical Work

Despite theoretical support for the idea that men and women may show love differently, the question of whether men’s and women’s love is actually associated with different relational behaviors has received relatively little empirical attention. Rather, the vast majority of the research on love and gender has focused on whether men and women think about or experience love differently. This literature suggests that men and women generally experience love in much the same way (Fehr, 2006), although there are some consistent differences. For instance, men and women tend to place differential importance on the emotional and sexual aspects of romantic love, such that women report valuing the emotional facets more than the sexual, whereas men show the reverse pattern (e.g., Schmitt et al., 2009). Men also tend to fall in love more quickly (Brantley, Knox, & Zusman, 2002) and hold more romanticized beliefs about love than women (e.g., Sprecher & Metts, 1999). However, much less is known about whether, as theory suggests, men and women show love in different ways. In fact, although the assumption has been that feelings of love translate into specific behaviors, little work has actually examined how people’s love is linked to their behavior, let alone explored gender as a potential moderator.

To date, only a handful of studies have directly investigated the intersection of love and gender in a way conducive to examining gender differences in the behavioral expression of love. In perhaps the first investigation examining the gendered display of love, Buss (1988) asked men and women to list five things that people of (a) their own gender and (b) the opposite gender do to express love. He found that certain expressions of love are considered more prototypical for one sex than the other. For instance, expressions such as offering resources and performing sex acts were viewed as more typical of men, whereas accommodative actions such as forgiving a partner’s infidelity were viewed as more typical of women (see Wade, Auer, and Roth, 2009, for a replication of this study). However, given that participants were asked to list loving behaviors typical of each sex rather than report the actual occurrence of behaviors in their relationships, the detected gender differences may tell us more about cultural stereotypes of how men and women show love than about actual differences in behavior.

More recently, Perrin and colleagues (2011) asked both partnered and unpartnered college students to indicate the types of loving behaviors they would prefer to receive from a romantic partner, as well as the loving behaviors they actually received (or had previously received) from a partner. Although the authors found a handful of differences in the behaviors men and women wanted their partners to show, no consistent gender differences were detected in the types of loving behaviors individuals reported receiving from their partners, leading the authors to reject the validity of Mars–Venus stereotypes regarding men’s and women’s loving behaviors. However, these results reflect the loving behaviors individuals reported receiving from partners who were not involved in the study, and thus it is unclear whether these behaviors were actually tied to the amount of love felt by people’s partners. Furthermore, because the sample comprised exclusively of college students—less than half of whom were involved in a romantic relationship at the time of the investigation—these findings may not reflect the ways individuals in established relationships express love in their day-to-day lives.

Only one study to date has examined whether love is differentially tied to specific behaviors among husbands and wives. In an effort to better understand maintenance strategies in marriage, Weigel and Ballard-Reisch (1999) asked married couples to rate the quality of their marriages and to indicate how often they engaged in a variety of relationship-enhancing behaviors. Specifically, participants indicated how often they acted positively toward their spouse, assured their partner of their commitment, openly discussed the relationship, interacted with family and mutual friends, and performed instrumental tasks. Although the researchers did not directly test for gender differences (separate models were run for husbands and wives), they found that wives’ love was tied to all five categories of self-reported behavior, whereas men’s love was associated only with their assurances of commitment.

Taken together, these studies offer only meager support for the notion that men and women show love in different ways. Indeed, whereas Buss (1988) found some gender differences in the behaviors college students believe are prototypical of the ways men and women show love, Perrin and colleagues (2011) did not uncover any differences in the “loving behaviors” men and women reported receiving from past or present romantic partners. Weigel and Ballard-Reisch (1999), on the other hand, provided suggestive evidence that men and women may differ in their tendency to express love in various ways but did not actually test for gender differences in these associations. By using daily diary reports of people’s behavior at four different points in their marriages, our research provides the first systematic test of whether love is differentially associated with husbands’ and wives’ behavior across socioemotional, companionate, and instrumental domains of marriage.

Gender and the Expression of Love

Socioemotional Behaviors

Drawing on the theoretical predictions described earlier, the first objective of the present study is to examine whether love is differentially tied to husbands’ and wives’ socioemotional behaviors, including their displays of affection (outside of sexual intercourse), negativity, and sexual interest (Huston & Vangelisti, 1991). Whether due to socialization or selection pressures, theory suggests that women are predisposed to be warm and nurturing (e.g., Eagly & Wood, 1999), whereas men are prone to suppress their more tender emotions (e.g., Archer, 1996). Indeed, women are generally believed to tend to the emotional climate of their romantic relationships to a greater extent than men, particularly by showing affection (e.g., Cancian, 1994). Although some researchers have presumed that women are more prone than men to express their feelings through affectionate behaviors (see Alexander & Wood, 2000), it is unknown whether wives are actually more likely than husbands to use affection to express love. Indeed, the only work that has even tangentially examined this question is Weigel and Ballard-Reisch’s (1999) aforementioned study of maintenance strategies in marriage, which found that love was associated with wives’, but not husbands’, reports of their own positive behaviors. Although this research provides suggestive evidence that women may be more prone than men to show love through affection, only a handful of affectionate behaviors were included in their measure of positivity, and the magnitude of this apparent gender difference was not examined.

In addition to behaving more affectionately, women who love their husbands may also exert more effort toward avoiding antagonistic behaviors. Negativity is a central component of the emotional climate of marriages (Caughlin & Huston, 2006), and suppressing negativity is often more beneficial for relationships than just being nice (Ewart, Taylor, Kraemer, & Agras, 1991; Rook, 2001). Compared with their less enamored counterparts, spouses who are more in love might be less likely to behave in a self-assertive, antagonistic manner, refraining from criticizing their partner or dominating conversations. Indeed, Swensen (1972) found that tolerating a partner’s less desirable characteristics and behaviors may be a common way of showing love, particularly in marital relationships. Compared with men, women are more likely to report behaving in a caring, helpful, or self-sacrificial manner (e.g., Sprecher & Fehr, 2005), providing suggestive evidence that women may be more inclined than men to show love by suppressing negativity. However, aside from some evidence that spouses may use reduced antagonism to express positive feelings during conversations (Gaelick, Bodenhausen, & Wyer, 1985), little is known about whether love is associated with a decreased tendency to behave in ways that are hurtful to, or otherwise undermine, one’s partner, let alone whether this tendency differs by gender.

In contrast to affection and negativity, sex is the one socioemotional behavior that theorists suggest should be more connected to men’s love than to women’s love (e.g., Buss, 1988; Cancian, 1986). Although both husbands and wives believe that sex provides an opportunity to express and strengthen their love for their spouse (e.g., Elliott & Umberson, 2008), husbands are especially likely to believe that the act of sexual intercourse is crucial for fostering intimacy (e.g., Frazier & Esterly, 1990). In fact, Rubin (1976) speculated that “sex may be the one place where [a man] can allow himself the expression of deep feelings, the one place where he can experience the depth of that affective side” (p. 147). Indeed, men seem to prefer sexual intimacy over emotional intimacy (Klusmann, 2002), and they are more likely than women to initiate sexual activity (see Baumeister, Catanese, & Vohs, 2001). However, Perrin and colleagues (2011) found no gender differences in individuals’ reports of how often their current or former partners used sexual behavior to express love. Thus, although romantic love and sexual behavior appear to go hand-in-hand (e.g., Hendrick & Hendrick, 2002), support for gender differences in this association has been tenuous, and existing work has not examined whether men’s love is more closely tied to initiating sexual behavior in established relationships than is women’s love.

Companionate and Instrumental Behaviors

The second objective of our research is to examine the prediction that men are more likely than women to show their love in more “masculine” ways, such as spending time with their loved one or providing help around the house. Consistent with theory, previous research has shown that, at least with respect to their friendships, men tend to value companionship and form relationships characterized by “closeness in the doing” and “the sharing of interests and activities” (Swain, 1989, p. 77). Other scholars (e.g., McNelles & Connolly, 1999; Radmacher & Azmitia, 2006, but see Fehr, 2004) have similarly found that men cultivate closeness and intimacy in their relationships by participating in joint activities. These studies provide some support for the idea that men may be more likely than women to express love through shared leisure, but this research has focused largely on men’s friendships and has not directly compared men’s and women’s companionate tendencies in romantic relationships, let alone linked these tendencies to their love for their partners. In one notable exception, Claxton and Perry-Jenkins (2008) found that the amount of leisure shared by couples expecting a child predicted the amount of love reported by men and women 1 year after the birth of their child. By focusing on the link between leisure activities and marital quality across the transition to parenthood, however, this study offers limited insight into whether men and women express love through shared activities on a day-to-day basis. The only other study that provides suggestive evidence that romantic love may be tied to the number of activities couples share did not test for gender differences in the strength of the association (see Gonzaga, Keltner, Londahl, & Smith, 2001).

Given men’s “activity-oriented” nature (Swain, 1989), theorists also have suggested that husbands may choose to communicate love through the performance of instrumental tasks, such as doing more housework either alone or alongside their spouses. To men, offering practical help can express care and concern for one’s partner (Wood & Inman, 1993), and, indeed, qualitative research suggests that husbands often believe their routine household contributions are imbued with love (e.g., Coltrane, 1989). Women, on the other hand, may be less likely to view instrumental contributions as acts of love. Wills, Weiss, and Patterson’s (1974) classic study offers a prototypical case in point: When instructed to show love to his spouse, one husband washed his wife’s car for her—an act that both his wife and the researchers dismissed as a helpful, but not “loving,” behavior. Although such gender differences in the association between love and the performance of household tasks have yet to be tested quantitatively, these findings lend credence to the notion that men, more than women, may rely on instrumental means to show their love.

Overview of the Current Study

To address the aforementioned shortcomings in the literature and formally test the proposition that men and women love differently, the present study examines gender differences in the association between marital love and the enactment of socioemotional, companionate, and instrumental behaviors. Using a standard measure of love (Braiker & Kelley, 1979) and a highly structured diary data procedure designed to identify the ways husbands and wives live on a day-to-day basis, we tested five hypotheses. With respect to spouses’ socioemotional behaviors, we expected that wives’ love would be more strongly associated with expressing affection (Hypothesis 1) and refraining from negative behavior (Hypothesis 2) than would husbands’ love, whereas husbands’ love would be more closely tied to initiating sexual activity than would wives’ love (Hypothesis 3). We also expected husbands’ love to be more strongly associated with a tendency to involve their spouse in their leisure activities than would be true for wives (Hypothesis 4). Finally, we hypothesized that, compared with wives’ love, husbands’ love would be more closely tied to their participation in day-to-day household tasks, as well as an increased tendency to perform such tasks in the company of their spouses (Hypothesis 5).

Method

Participants and Procedure

Participants were 168 couples in their first marriages recruited from marriage license records in four counties in rural central Pennsylvania. The majority of participants were Caucasian (99%) and high school educated (55%). The first wave of data was collected within 2 months of each couple’s wedding date, the second and third waves were conducted at yearly intervals, and the final wave took place after the couples had been married for 13 years. At the final wave of data collection, we were able to ascertain the marital status of 164 of the 168 couples: 105 couples were still married, 3 were widowed, and 56 had divorced.

Each wave consisted of an extensive interview, followed by a series of telephone diary interviews during which spouses independently provided information about their day-to-day activities and interactions. During each interview, husbands and wives (separately) reported whether they—or, in regard to socioemotional behaviors, their partners—engaged in an array of activities during the preceding 24-hr period, ending at 5 p.m. the evening of the call. The interviews were conducted on 9 days over a 2- to 3-week period (one call on each weeknight, two calls on Saturday evenings, and two calls on Sunday evenings). Calls took place between 5 p.m. and 11 p.m.; individuals who worked evenings were contacted the following morning. However, all husband and wife pairs reported on the same 24-hr period. Due to the time-intensive nature of the telephone diaries (each call lasted between 10 and 30 min), not all couples could be interviewed about the same 24-hr period, but every effort was made to maintain uniform spacing (e.g., 1 to 2 days) between the calls across couples. For additional information about the telephone diary procedure, please refer to Huston, Robins, Atkinson, & McHale, 1987.

Measures

The data described below were gathered during each of the four waves of data collection. Means, standard deviations, and ranges for all major study variables can be found in Table 1.

Table 1.

Means, Standard Deviations, and Ranges for Study Variables

	Husbands			Wives
Variable	M	SD	Range	M	SD	Range
Love
Phase 1	8.15	0.71	4.56-9.00	8.38	0.71	4.00-9.00
Phase 2	7.88	0.95	4.33-9.00	8.10	0.81	5.44-9.00
Phase 3	7.83	1.10	3.44-9.00	8.03	1.07	3.00-9.00
Phase 4	7.88	0.94	4.44-9.00	7.90	1.12	4.44-9.00
Affectionate behavior
Phase 1	22.26	22.84	2.50-68.78	21.48	20.78	1.90-97.89
Phase 2	14.41	8.00	2.60-38.67	13.50	7.90	0.11-45.3
Phase 3	11.46	6.46	1.89-38.00	11.29	6.10	0.22-30.8
Phase 4	9.69	4.76	1.17-27.00	9.80	5.36	0.83-37.5
Negative behavior
Phase 1	1.84	2.29	0.0-17.56	1.86	3.96	0.00-39.00
Phase 2	1.74	2.14	0.0-12.22	1.27	1.58	0.00-9.44
Phase 3	1.67	2.03	0.0-11.44	1.25	1.49	0.00-7.33
Phase 4	1.68	2.05	0.0-13.50	1.47	2.15	0.00-14.17
Sexual initiation
Phase 1	0.61	0.50	0.00-2.50	0.41	1.11	0.0-2.89
Phase 2	0.42	0.48	0.00-3.11	0.18	0.18	0.0-0.78
Phase 3	0.35	0.36	0.00-2.33	0.14	0.18	0.0-1.11
Phase 4	0.30	0.32	0.00-2.00	0.13	0.23	0.0-1.50
Couple-centered leisure to overall leisure
Phase 1	0.38	0.15	0.09-0.74	0.35	0.13	0.12-0.74
Phase 2	0.28	0.14	0.00-0.74	0.27	0.14	0.00-0.62
Phase 3	0.22	0.16	0.00-0.67	0.21	0.13	0.00-0.56
Phase 4	0.16	0.14	0.00-0.70	0.13	0.09	0.00-0.39
Leisure with spouse to overall leisure
Phase 1	0.63	0.17	0.26-1.00	0.60	0.16	0.21-0.96
Phase 2	0.53	0.18	0.05-0.96	0.51	0.17	0.03-0.93
Phase 3	0.44	0.19	0.12-0.74	0.42	0.18	0.07-0.89
Phase 4	0.50	0.21	0.11-1.00	0.46	0.22	0.13-1.00
Number of household tasks performed
Phase 1	2.04	1.20	0.00-8.00	4.68	1.82	1.67-20.0
Phase 2	1.76	1.11	0.00-5.33	4.59	1.53	0.11-8.78
Phase 3	2.17	1.34	0.33-7.77	5.08	2.11	0.00-12.11
Phase 4	2.04	1.51	0.17-8.50	5.69	2.02	2.17-10.7
Household tasks with spouse to total tasks
Phase 1	0.43	0.24	0.00-1.00	0.18	0.15	0.00-0.62
Phase 2	0.30	0.22	0.00-1.00	0.12	0.13	0.00-0.74
Phase 3	0.28	0.20	0.00-0.82	0.11	0.10	0.00-0.50
Phase 4	0.20	0.24	0.00-1.00	0.08	0.09	0.00-0.47

Note: For Phase 1, n = 168; for Phase 2, n = 158; for Phase 3, n = 154; and for Phase 4, n = 105.

Love

Love was conceptualized as the extent to which participants felt a sense of closeness, belonging, and attachment to their partners. Such a conceptualization of love closely resembles that of companionate love, described as “the affection and tenderness we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply intertwined” (Hatfield & Rapson, 1993, p. 9). The attachment and closeness associated with companionate love is considered prototypical of love in general (Fehr & Russell, 1991), and of marital relationships in particular (e.g., Neff & Karney, 2009).

Spouses’ reports of love were assessed during the face-to-face interviews, using the love subscale from Braiker and Kelley’s (1979) Relationship Questionnaire. Partners responded to questions such as, “To what extent do you love your partner?” “To what extent do you have a sense of ‘belonging’ with your partner?” “How close do you feel toward your partner?” and “How attached do you feel to your partner?” Each item was rated on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 9 (extremely). We excluded 1 of the 10 items (“How sexually intimate are you with your partner?”) because it made direct reference to one of the gender-specific ways love can be shown in close relationships (i.e., sexual behavior); alpha coefficients ranged from .76 to .90.¹ Consistent with previous research on companionate love (Hatfield & Rapson, 1993; Sprecher & Sedikides, 1993), we found a statistically significant, but substantively small, gender difference in reports of felt love, such that women reported higher levels of love than men in the first 2 years of marriage, Time 1: t(167) = 3.59, p < .001; Time 2: t(143) = 2.43, p < .05. In the analyses, love was centered on the grand mean for use in the interaction terms.

Socioemotional behavior

To assess spouses’ affectionate and negative behaviors, as well as their attempts to initiate sex, we asked partners to report on each other’s behavior over the prior 24-hr period. The expression of affection was assessed using spouses’ diary reports of how often their partner enacted seven specific affectionate behaviors during the last 24 hr, including saying “I love you,” expressing approval or offering compliments, and showing physical affection (outside of intercourse). The seven items were aggregated to create daily averages of affectionate expression, with alpha coefficients ranging from .78 to .92. Similarly, negativity was assessed using seven items recorded during the telephone diaries, such as, “Your partner criticized or complained about something you did or didn’t do,” “Your partner seemed bored or uninterested while you were talking,” and “Your partner did something knowing it annoyed you.” These behaviors were aggregated across days to produce an index of negativity, with alpha coefficients ranging from .78 to .91 (see Huston & Vangelisti, 1991, for a complete list of the affection and negativity items). To assess participants’ frequency of sexual initiation, spouses reported how many times their partner initiated sexual activity during the prior 24-hr period. Instances of sexual initiation were averaged across days to yield an overall index of each partner’s initiation efforts. Notably, although partner reports have their own limitations (for instance, individuals may misread their partner’s intentions or behaviors; see Thompson & Walker, 1982), our use of partner-reported behavior helps avoid the problem of people’s love coloring their reports of their own socioemotional expressions.

Leisure activities

To assess how couples allocated their leisure time, participants were asked, during the telephone interviews, to report the number of times they engaged in each of 50 specific leisure activities and to indicate whether their spouse or other parties were present. The leisure activities included activities such as shopping, socializing, partying, and watching television, and events such as sporting activities, group gatherings, and outdoor festivities (for a full list of the leisure activities, see Crawford & Huston, 1993). The number of times individuals participated in each activity was aggregated across days to create measures of (a) the ratio of activities involving the couple alone (i.e., couple-centered) to the total number of leisure activities performed and (b) the ratio of leisure activities involving one’s spouse (with or without third parties) to the total number of leisure activities performed. Including both of these variables allowed us to examine whether spouses’ love manifests not only in the proportion of their leisure they share alone with their partner but also in their general tendency to include their spouse in their leisure activities.

Household tasks

During the telephone diary interviews, spouses reported the number of times they performed 12 routine household tasks during the previous 24 hr (e.g., doing the dishes, running errands, preparing dinner, going grocery shopping, straightening the house). For each task, spouses specified whether they performed the task alone or with their partner. The tasks were summed and averaged across days to yield measures of the total number of tasks performed (either alone or with one’s spouse) and the ratio of tasks performed with one’s spouse to the total number of tasks performed.

Results

To examine the influence of gender on spouses’ expressions of love, we used multilevel modeling procedures conducted in SAS Proc Mixed. The multilevel framework, which accounts for interdependencies resulting from data that are clustered within both individuals and couples, can be conceptualized as a two-step series of iterative regressions (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992). At the first level of analysis, each individual’s score on a given outcome (e.g., affectionate behavior) was modeled as a function of the individual’s love for his or her spouse and the time of assessment (coded 0, 1, 2, or 3), which was included as an adjustment variable in all analyses.² A dichotomous variable representing the presence (1) or absence (0) of children in the home was also included as a covariate in all analyses.³ The basic Level 1 (within-person) equation was as follows:

D V_{i j k} = β_{0 i j} + β_{1 i j} {Love}_{i j k} + β_{2 i j} {Time}_{i j k} + β_{3 i j} {Children}_{i j k} + r_{i j k},

where DV_ijk represents the dependent variable score of person i, in couple j, at time k; β_0ij represents the intercept; β_1ij, β_2ij, and β_3ij represent the slopes for love, time, and the presence of children, respectively; and r_ijk represents the error term.

At the second level, the intercept and slope for love estimated at Level 1 were regressed onto gender (−.5 = men, .5 = women), a person-level variable. Because we knew which couples divorced by year 13 of marriage, we also controlled for divorce status (0 = continuously married, 1 = divorced) to account for the possibility that couples who remain married behave differently than their divorcing counterparts.⁴ The Level 2 (between-person) model was as follows:

\begin{matrix} β_{0 i j} = γ_{00} + γ_{01} {Gender}_{i j} + γ_{02} {Divorce}_{i j} + u_{0 i j}, \\ β_{1 i j} = γ_{10} + γ_{11} {Gender}_{i j}, \\ β_{2 i j} = γ_{20}, \\ β_{3 i j} = γ_{30}, \end{matrix}

where γ₀₀ is the grand mean intercept; γ₁₀ and γ₂₀ are the mean love and time slopes; γ₃₀ is the slope when spouses report having no children; γ₀₁ and γ₁₁ are the fixed effects of gender on the intercept and slope of love, respectively; γ₀₂ is the fixed effect of divorce on the intercept; and u_0ij is the residual component for the intercept. In the initial analyses, the slopes for love and time were modeled as random coefficients; however, because some of the models did not converge, the effects for these variables were modeled as fixed (as reflected in the absence of error terms in their Level 2 equations). To best account for the uneven spacing of our waves, all models were fit using an unstructured residual covariance matrix.

We included time as an adjustment variable rather than an interaction term in our models for several reasons. First, although it is possible that gender differences in the associations between love and various behaviors might change over the course of marriage, there is no theoretical reason to believe this should be the case. We were more interested in the robustness of the associations between love and socioemotional, companionate, and instrumental behaviors across time, using gender as a moderator. Second, given the substantial time gap between the third and fourth waves of our study (more than 10 years), our data are not well suited for conducting a growth-curve analysis to test for systematic trends across time. Indeed, such results would be difficult to interpret, as any number of unmeasured factors over the intervening years could influence the shape of the curve. Finally, consistent with our rationale, preliminary analyses including time as a moderator did not reveal any meaningful patterns of change over time, and the vast majority of the Love × Gender × Time interactions were nonsignificant. Thus, time was simply included as a control to allow us to account for issues commonly associated with longitudinal designs, such as autocorrelation and participant fatigue.

Socioemotional Behavior

We first examined the moderating role of gender in the association between love and individuals’ socioemotional behavior in marriage (as reported by their partners), specifically affection (Hypothesis 1), negativity (Hypothesis 2), and sexual initiation (Hypothesis 3; see Table 2). As expected, there was a significant main effect of love on spouses’ enactment of affectionate behaviors, indicating that the more individuals loved their partner, the more affectionately they behaved toward him or her. However, contrary to our hypothesis, the interaction between love and gender did not predict affection.

Table 2.

Effects of Love and Gender on Socioemotional Behaviors: Multilevel Model Results for Affection, Negativity, and Sexual Initiation

Variable	Affectionate behavior	Negative behavior	Sexual initiation
Intercept	18.98 (0.79)***	1.60 (0.21)***	0.49 (0.05)***
Love	0.82 (0.29)**	−0.15 (0.08)	−0.02 (0.02)
Gender	−0.58 (0.42)	−0.25 (0.11)*	−0.20 (0.03)***
Love × Gender	−0.92 (0.50)	−0.28 (0.14)*	−0.16 (0.04)***
Time	−3.23 (0.31)***	−0.18 (0.08)*	−0.12(0.02)***
Divorce	0.98 (1.30)	0.63 (0.35)	0.01 (0.08)
Children	−1.41 (0.76)	0.37 (0.20)	0.06 (0.05)

Note: Standard errors are in parentheses.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

With respect to negativity, the main effect for love was not significant, but a significant interaction between love and gender was detected. As predicted, women who were more in love enacted significantly fewer antagonistic behaviors toward their husbands (p < .01), whereas men engaged in a consistent number of negative behaviors regardless of how much they loved their wives (see Figure 1a).

Figure 1.

The associations between love and the socioemotional behaviors of (a) negativity and (b) sexual initiation as moderated by participants’ gender

Finally, consistent with prior research, men were considerably more likely than women to initiate sexual activity; however, greater love for one’s spouse was not significantly associated with how often an individual initiated sex. However, a significant Love × Gender interaction was found. In support of our hypothesis, men’s love was positively associated with how often they initiated sexual activity with their partners (p < .05); unexpectedly, women’s love was inversely related to their initiation attempts (p < .001; see Figure 1b).

Taken together, these analyses provide some evidence for gender differences in socioemotional behavior. Whereas wives were more likely than husbands to show their love by suppressing negativity, husbands were more likely than wives to express love by initiating sex. Husbands and wives did not differ, however, in their tendency to be more affectionate the more they loved their spouse.

Leisure Activities

A further objective of our research was to examine whether gender moderates the link between love and people’s propensity to involve their spouse in their leisure activities (Hypothesis 4). As shown in the first two columns of Table 3, the main effect of love on leisure was significant only for the ratio of leisure involving one’s spouse to overall leisure; the more individuals loved their spouse, the greater the proportion of their leisure activities they reported sharing with him or her. Significant Love × Gender interactions were found for both variables. As expected, men’s love was more closely tied to the way they structured their leisure than was women’s love. Men who were more in love spent a greater percentage of their overall leisure engaged in couple-centered activities (p < .05) and activities that included their partners in some way (p < .001). In contrast, the amount of love wives reported for their husbands was not reflected in either of the leisure variables (see Figure 2a and 2b).

Table 3.

Effects of Love and Gender on Companionate and Instrumental Behaviors: Multilevel Model Results for Leisure Activities and Household Tasks

Variable	Ratio of couple-centered leisure to overall leisure	Ratio of leisure with spouse to overall leisure	Number of household tasks performed	Ratio of household tasks with spouse to total tasks
Intercept	0.35 (0.01)***	0.57 (0.02)***	3.99 (0.14)***	0.27 (0.02)***
Love	0.00 (0.01)	0.03 (0.01)***	0.03 (0.06)	0.01 (0.01)
Gender	−0.02 (0.01)*	−0.02 (0.01)	2.54 (0.10)***	−0.17 (0.01)***
Love × Gender	−0.02 (0.01)*	−0.02 (0.01)*	0.01 (0.06)	−0.04 (0.01)***
Time	−0.03 (0.01)***	−0.03 (0.01)***	−0.02 (0.11)	−0.05 (0.01)***
Divorce	0.02 (0.02)	−0.02 (0.02)	−0.26 (0.18)	−0.02 (0.02)
Children	−0.15 (0.01)***	−0.09 (0.02)***	0.65 (0.15)***	−0.04 (0.02)*
Work hours	0.00 (0.00)	0.00 (0.00)***	0.02 (0.00)***	−0.00 (0.00)***

Note: Standard errors are in parentheses.

p < .05. ***p < .001.

Figure 2.

The associations between love and (a) the ratio of couple-centered leisure to overall leisure, (b) the ratio of leisure involving one’s spouse (with or without third parties) to overall leisure, and (c) the ratio of household tasks performed with one’s spouse to the overall tasks performed as moderated by participants’ gender.

Household Tasks

Finally, we examined the prediction that husbands would be more likely than wives to express their love in an instrumental manner (Hypothesis 5). To test this hypothesis, we explored the moderating role of gender in the association between love and instrumental behavior, as reflected in individuals’ self-reported performance of routine household tasks (see columns 3 and 4 of Table 3). The main effect of love on the amount of housework spouses performed or their tendency to perform this work alone versus with their partner was not significant. Although the interaction between love and gender did not significantly predict the total number of household tasks individuals performed, gender did moderate the link between love and the proportion of participants’ total household labor that they performed with their spouses. As projected, men who loved their partners more performed a greater percentage of their daily housework alongside their wives versus alone (p < .001), whereas women’s tendency to complete household tasks with their husbands was unrelated to how much they loved their partners (see Figure 2c).

Discussion

Using a sample of married couples, we tested the widespread idea that men and women show their love differently. The hypothesized gender differences in expressing love—proposed by both sociostructural and evolutionary theorists and reflected in popular stereotypes—were partially supported by our results. Consistent with evolutionary perspectives and prior research (e.g., Buss, 1988), love and sexual initiation seemed to be more closely connected for men than for women. Furthermore, as implied by sociostructural theorists, loving wives tended to adopt a communal orientation toward their spouse by refraining from negativity, whereas husbands were more likely to express their love by sharing activities with their partner. However, contrary to theory and popular thought, love did not inspire wives to behave more affectionately than their husbands, nor did it inspire husbands to help out more around the house. Overall, our data suggest that gender differences in expressing love are more complex than implied by either evolutionary or sociostructural approaches.

For their part, wives seem to show love by tending to the emotional climate of their marriages. Cultivating a warm marital climate requires both the presence of affection and the relative absence of negativity (Caughlin & Huston, 2006), and indeed, wives expressed their love through compliments and kisses as well as restraint from antagonism. The use of both affectionate and accommodating behaviors to show love may reflect wives’ tendency to adopt a communal orientation toward their husbands, as showing less negativity demonstrates a special concern for one’s spouse that is not necessarily reflected in overt expressions of affection, such as saying “I love you” or giving a hug. Furthermore, by biting their tongues, these wives may demonstrate an almost self-sacrificing restraint and provide husbands with room to assert themselves (Helgeson & Fritz, 1998). This pattern may be consistent with evidence suggesting that love creates a certain malleability among American women; for instance, Johnson and Huston (1998) found that wives’ love was tied to their propensity to adopt their spouses’ desires regarding husbands’ involvement in daily child care responsibilities. Husbands’ love, in contrast, did not produce a reciprocal accommodation toward their wives. Had we only examined the overtly affectionate aspects of socioemotional behavior, we would have overlooked the more accommodative ways in which wives express love.

Contrary to the notion that women are more inclined than men to show love through affection, husbands were just as likely as wives to express their love by engaging in warm, intimate behaviors. Even in our fairly traditional sample of married couples, the proficiency gap in using affection to show love discussed in scholarly writings (e.g., Cancian, 1986; Wood & Inman, 1993) and echoed in the popular media was not apparent. It is possible that persistent social pressure to view affectionate behaviors as the “proper” way of demonstrating one’s love has led men to embrace this stereotypically feminine form of expression.

Not only did husbands show love through affection, but, as predicted, husbands who were more in love were also more likely to initiate sex with their wives. These findings are consistent with those of Buss (1988), who found that men were four times as likely as women to view sex as an act of love. Indeed, sex seems to be an important channel through which men express loving feelings. Wives’ love, in contrast, was inversely associated with sexual initiation. Rather than suggesting that loving wives are uninterested in sex, it is possible that wives who are less in love respond to a perceived decline in marital quality by initiating sex more often in an attempt to revitalize their marriages. Alternatively, this pattern may reflect a traditional deference to male sexual prerogative, further exemplifying wives’ tendency to show love through accommodation (in this case, by allowing their husbands to enact the role of the sexual initiator). Consistent with this idea, additional analyses revealed that—regardless of gender—spouses who loved their partners more were more likely to report having had sex with them during the prior 24 hr.

Beyond an increased propensity to initiate sex, men appear to show their love in a number of other companionate ways. Through the use of daily diary reports, we were able to demonstrate that marital love is manifested in a variety of behaviors—a unique contribution, given that prior research suggesting men show their love in companionate or instrumental ways has been qualitative or only tangentially related to the question at hand. Unlike wives, husbands who were more in love were more likely to involve their spouses in a greater proportion of both their leisure activities and household labor. Contrary to the notion that men are particularly inclined to show their love through instrumental acts, our findings suggest that it is the companionate nature of doing household tasks together, rather than the performance of tasks itself, that is connected to men’s love. Indeed, love did not incite either husbands or wives to increase the number of household tasks they performed on a day-to-day basis. Despite the common belief that men provide more household help the more they love their partners, it may be that characteristics such as trait conscientiousness or self-regulatory ability better predict spouses’ tendency to perform “helping” tasks than do their feelings of love (see Peetz & Kammrath, 2011). Although prior work has demonstrated that men’s friendships often are defined largely by companionship and shared activities (e.g., Radmacher & Azmitia, 2006), our findings are the first to show that this orientation not only extends to the marital relationship but also manifests itself in leisure activities, household work, and sexual behavior. Husbands’ love appears to create an environment that draws spouses together in activity.

Some Final Thoughts

Only recently have researchers moved beyond studying archetypal and preferred ways of showing love to exploring how love is reflected in what partners do and how they treat each other on a day-to-day basis. The use of highly structured daily diary reports, gathered individually from spouses over multiple days, made it possible to examine how the love husbands and wives feel for one another is tied to their day-to-day behaviors. Rather than asking husbands and wives either to portray their marriage in general terms, or to reflect on the ways they show love, we were able to probe how variations in the strength of love are reflected in how they function together in their daily life. By doing so, we were able to focus on patterns of activities and interactions that actually occur in relationships, rather than tap spouses’ beliefs or schemas about how men and women should show love.

However, given the correlational nature of our data, we cannot definitively demonstrate that the love husbands and wives felt for one another caused them to engage in the various behaviors we examined. It is also plausible that behaving in certain ways promotes feelings of marital love. For instance, Aron, Aron, Norman, McKenna, and Heyman (2000) found that participating in novel shared activities is tied to heightened relationship quality among romantic partners. It is possible that spending leisure time with one’s partner may serve to deepen intimacy and, in turn, increase the love spouses feel for one another. More than likely, the behaviors men and women use to show love and the love they feel for their partners are mutually reinforcing. In other words, spouses’ love for one another is likely both a cause and consequence of the ways they act toward each other. Although it will be important for future research to tease apart these associations, our use of partner-provided, daily diary reports to capture behavioral expressions of love represents a significant advance over past attempts to understand whether cultural stereotypes of love actually play out in romantic relationships.

Another potential limitation of our study is the relative homogeneity of the sample. The couples were predominantly White, lived in a rural area, and—as a whole—held fairly traditional attitudes regarding gender roles. However, our findings do not appear to be a function of spouses’ gender-role ideologies, as controlling for such attitudes did not attenuate the significant interactions between love and gender, nor did gender-role ideology moderate these associations.⁵ Although our sample is mostly White, it has the strength of being more educationally and socioeconomically diverse than most collegiate samples or samples drawn from university towns and, in that sense, is more representative of the general population. Indeed, college students tend to be younger, better educated, and more egalitarian than individuals in nonacademic settings (e.g., Peterson, 2001). Moreover, most college students are unmarried, and when they are romantically involved, their relationships do not fully capture the dynamics found in long-standing romantic unions. Thus, compared with prior research, our data may speak more to how the average American man or woman expresses love in marital relationships. Nevertheless, future research should examine whether the present pattern of findings is consistent within ethnically diverse, noncollegiate samples, or whether gender differences in the expression of love tend to vary across racial groups.

Similarly, researchers should explore whether men and women show love differently in other cultures. Although love may have evolved to promote reproductive success (Buss, 1988; Fisher, 2004), love is, at least in part, a socially constructed phenomenon (e.g., Noller, 1996), and thus, its manifestations are influenced by the culture within which partners live. Indeed, there appears to be cross-cultural variation in the ways individuals experience love (e.g., Dion & Dion, 1996; Sprecher & Toro-Morn, 2002) and express their love to romantic partners (Gareis & Wilkins, 2011; Kline, Horton, & Zhang, 2008). For instance, Gareis and Wilkins (2011) found that Germans are more likely than Americans to report that nonverbal displays of love are more common than verbal expressions of love. Culture may also influence the specific types of gender differences observed. Preliminary results from our work with Huic and colleagues (2011) suggest that, unlike the present study, wives in Croatia may be more likely than husbands to show love by doing housework, whereas Croatian husbands may be more likely than wives to perform acts of chivalry to express love.

Finally, although individuals regularly nominate a variety of socioemotional and companionate behaviors as signals of love (e.g., Buss, 1988; Marston & Hecht, 1994; Wade et al., 2009), it is possible that certain kinds of behaviors are more easily interpreted as “loving” than others. For instance, if love has become feminized in our society, as Cancian (1986) suggested, then engaging in verbal and physical affection may be more readily perceived as expressive of love than including one’s spouse in leisure activities or doing the dishes together. Considering the ability to recognize and correctly interpret one another’s behavior is a key predictor of couples’ relationship quality (e.g., Noller & Fitzpatrick, 1990), future work should explore whether individuals’ displays of love are perceived as such by their partners and whether men and women differ in their ability to express love in ways that their partners understand.

Theorists and laypeople alike have long embraced the notion that men and women show love differently. The present findings, however, suggest that men’s and women’s love is not differentially tied to how affectionate they are or how much work they do around the house. Moreover, contrary to the popular notion that wives’ ability to love outshines that of men, it appears that husbands may actually use a wider range of behaviors to show their love than wives, drawing upon both socioemotional and companionate displays. Wives, on the other hand, seem to rely primarily on socioemotional expressions of love, complementing their overt displays of affection with a tendency to be accommodative. Taken together, our findings add nuance to public understanding of how men and women express love and suggest that characterizing these gender differences is a job for the scalpel, not the sword. To shamelessly abuse the metaphor, we did not find men in a Martian cave nor women in a Venusian garden, but rather in separate neighborhoods of the same town.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge Marci Gleason and April Wilson for their statistical advice. They also thank Gilbert Geis, Timothy Loving, and Lisa Neff for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by grants to Ted L. Huston from the National Science Foundation (SBR-9311846) and the National Institute of Mental Health (MH-33938).

Notes

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