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July 31st, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda TUESDAY, July 31 (HealthDay News) — Think married men and women
show their love in vastly different ways? Not necessarily.
Although popular culture reinforces the stereotype that there’s a
gender gap when it comes to expressing affection, few studies have
actually tested the notion.
A small new study suggests, however, that men are just as likely as
women to be openly affectionate. The study, which also identified some
differences between the sexes, was published recently in the journal
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
“Men and women are actually more similar in the ways they express love
than they are different,” said study author Elizabeth Schoenfeld, a
researcher at the University of Texas in Austin. “But we also learned
that, even in the wake of feminism, wives express love by being less
assertive and more accommodating, while husbands show love by initiating
sex or sharing activities together.”
The study involved 168 couples in first marriages living in rural
central Pennsylvania. Data was collected in initial interviews, followed
by telephone interviews in which husbands and wives separately reported
activities and interactions. The interviews occurred within two months of
when each couple was married and then annually, with a final set of
interviews conducted after 13 years of marriage.
At the conclusion of the study, 105 of the original couples were still
married, three were widowed and 56 were divorced. Almost all of the
participants were white, and more than half had a high school
education.
Contrary to some common gender stereotypes, the research showed that
the more men loved their wives, the more likely they were to be
affectionate. They were also more likely to involve their spouses in their
leisure activities and in household chores. Love did not, however, mean a
husband did more chores around the house or was more eager to relieve his
wife of the chores for which she was responsible.
The researchers found, in general, that a husband’s love may create an
environment in which the couple does a variety of things together. The
more husbands loved their wives, the more likely they were to initiate
sex. For wives, though, increased love for their husbands meant they were
actually less likely to make the first move.
Why would that be? “If a wife is feeling unloved, it could be that she
is attempting to kick-start the marriage,” Schoenfeld said.
Wives’ love was less associated with interest in joint activities, and
relied more on expressions of love. More love also was associated with
greater accommodation to husbands’ moods and needs.
“Biting their tongues, letting men initiate sex more often, showing a
willingness to allow men to assert themselves a little more — this is
what we saw when women were more in love,” Schoenfeld explained.
Some experts believe differences between men and women in marriage are
typically overemphasized.
“There aren’t too many real gender and sex differences between men and
women on the whole,” said Stevie Yap, a researcher in the department of
psychology at Michigan State University in East Lansing. “If you look at
the overall research, gender differences don’t usually hold up.”
Yap, who recently published research on happiness and marriage in the
Journal of Research and Personality, found that although matrimony
doesn’t tend to make people happier than they were when they were single,
it appears to protect against declines in happiness that can occur in
adulthood.
Yap said only a few gender differences actually have been shown by
research to be real: men tend to be physically stronger and more sexually
active, and have a greater tendency toward aggression. He said that even
these three characteristics, however, can be affected by socialization and
experience.
Schoenfeld, too, thinks differences between the sexes have been
exaggerated.
“Don’t be fooled by popular stereotypes,” she said. “Men are not from
Mars and women are not from Venus. We are all on planet Earth.”
More information
For more on marriage, visit the National Healthy Marriage Resource Center.
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