The stereotype is 'that women want or need relationships more,' but data shows it's men who are more likely to rush down the aisle

Among Americans’ favorite romantic comedies are “Pretty Woman,” “Sleepless in Seattle” and “Sixteen Candles,” according to a series of 2023 YouGov polls.

In those and the many romcoms like them, the plot is fairly simple: The female lead pines after a man, they end up together, often after a series of kooky encounters. The end. The trope echoes a long-held belief about male-female dynamics.

“There’s kind of a stereotype out there that women want or need relationships more than men,” says Justin Lehmiller, senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, “and that women would be more inclined to commit faster to a relationship.”

But a recent DatingNews.com and Kinsey Institute study of 2,000 U.S. singles refutes that claim.

More than a quarter, 28.6% of men would speed up their move-in timeline in a relationship and 18.8% would marry sooner, according to the study. That’s as compared to 18.8% of women who’d move in faster and 13.7% who’d marry sooner.