From the “light” lover to the one overwhelmed by passion with peaks of ten relationships a week: research on over 1,500 people identifies the four profiles into which we divide ourselves when we fall in love.
There is not just one way to experience falling in love. There are those who approach the relationship calmly, those who are overwhelmed by passion and those who combine a strong emotional involvement with an out of the ordinary sexual desire. A study by the Australian National University, published on Personality and individual differencesconducted on 1,556 people in 33 different countries, identified four profiles among 809 participants who were in love and in a relationship at the time.
Mild romantic lover
Those who fall into this category represent 20.02% of the sample and experience falling in love without being completely absorbed by their partner: they think less often about their loved one, experience less overwhelming emotions and obtain the lowest scores for intensity of falling in love, obsessive thinking and commitment.
Sexual activity is also the most limited, with an average of 2.12 intercourse per week; furthermore, only 82.72% of the group declares to be sexually active and just 25.31% are certain that their partner reciprocates their love. This, however, does not necessarily mean loving superficially: the light lover can build stable and satisfying relationships, even without experiencing that euphoric and all-encompassing component often associated with infatuation. Members of this group also declare that they have fallen in love several times in their life, but on average they experience shorter relationships.
Lecherous romantic lover
It is the smallest group, just 9.64% of the sample, as well as the one that stands out most for the frequency of sexual activity: the average in fact reaches 9.92 intercourse per week, almost four times that of the other profiles, with extreme cases up to twenty. Emotionally, however, he resembles the intense lover, with high levels of passion, obsessive thinking and commitment to the relationship.
The group is mainly made up of men and is the one with the largest share of seriously committed but non-cohabiting couples. Contrary to what one might imagine, these participants have been in love for longer and the study does not reveal a greater propensity for betrayal. They also declare greater vitality, more hours of sleep and lower levels of anxiety and depression: data that describe a sexually very intense, but not necessarily unstable, form of love.
Intense romantic lover
It involves 29.42% of participants and is the profile of the so-called “head over heels lovers”, i.e. those “lost in love”. In this case the relationship is a dominant presence in emotional life: the partner occupies many daily thoughts, the desire for closeness is strong and the level of commitment reaches the highest values in the study.
Sexual frequency is also relatively high, with an average of 2.84 intercourse per week.
It is the only group in which women prevail (59.66%) and it is the one in which the most people said they were in love before the relationship even began. Intense lovers score high on agreeableness and conscientiousness and show less propensity for risky behavior. It is the profile that comes closest to the traditional image of the lover, for whom the relationship is central and makes distance, uncertainty and possible crises more difficult to bear.
Moderate romantic lover
It is the largest group (40.91% of those examined), and represents a sort of middle ground between detachment and extreme passion. The moderate lover experiences significant emotional involvement, thinks about their partner regularly and is willing to invest in the relationship, without letting it take up every space of their life. The intensity of falling in love is relatively contained, while the level of commitment is already high.
The frequency of sexual intercourse is also intermediate, with an average of 2.46 times a week. It is a profile made up predominantly of men, who represent 57.69% of the group, and includes the lowest percentage of participants with children. The authors describe him as the most common type of lover: there is no lack of enthusiasm, attraction and desire, but they are accompanied by the ability to maintain autonomy, clarity and continuity in everyday life.
