If you’re wondering why some lovebirds barely come up for air during the first few months of dating while others seem to lack any kind of spark, one new study may have some answers. 

Though anyone who has engaged in romantic love before is likely aware that everyone expresses their feelings differently, until recently, no specific research has been conducted into why this phenomenon may exist. In the context of romantic relationships, variation exists in the mechanistic, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive expression of love.

According to researchers at the Australian National University, the University of Canberra and the University of South Australia, there are four distinct categories of romantic lovers, each personifying a different approach to lust, companionship and commitment. 

Drawing on data from the university’s 2022 Romantic Love Survey, the study examines the responses and romantic expressions of 1,556 English-speaking young adults from 33 countries and a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The participants were aged 18-25 and self-identified as being in love with a romantic partner, whether dating, committed, married or in a de facto partnership.

“The Romantic Love Survey is the first of its kind and a game changer in the science of romantic love,” says one of the study’s lead researchers, Adam Bode. “This really is a coup for ANU to have collected the world’s largest dataset of people experiencing romantic love.”

“Romantic love is under-researched given its importance in family and romantic relationship formation, its influence on culture, and its proposed universality, and we want to help world researchers understand it.”

Prior to this study, Bode says the majority of research into romantic love has been used to investigate the well-documented increase in sexual activity and desire in the early stages of a romantic partnership.

This new research, as well as the university’s decision to share the results of the Romantic Love Survey, will hopefully inspire a new wave of interest and research into human behaviour, explains Bode. 

“This study will help facilitate ideas for future research, and these findings have implications for the evolution of romantic love,” Bode says. “Humans may still be evolving in terms of how they express romantic love”.

Using data from the 2022 survey, this study focused on 809 partnered young adults who described themselves as ‘in love’ based on the intensity of romantic love, obsessive thinking, commitment, and frequency of sexual activity per week.

Comparing the findings, Bode and the research team categorised the group into four clusters of romantic lovers: mild romantic lovers, moderate romantic lovers, libidinous – or lustful – romantic lovers and intense romantic lovers.

Underpinned by varying characteristics, the participants were placed in a particular category based on factors such as how quickly they fell in love, how much sleep they needed and how frequently they had sex, highlighting the diversity in the way people experience romantic love.

“The bottom line is that we don’t all love the same, with some people having sex up to 20 times per week when they fall in love,” Bode says. “How we fall in love is associated with a range of other interesting behaviours.” 

The 4 types of romantic lovers

#1. Moderate lovers 

By far the largest cluster (making up 40 per cent of lovers), moderate romantic lovers are characterised by relatively high commitment, relatively low intensity and obsessive thinking, and relatively moderate frequency of sex. 

The researchers defined this group as ‘entirely unremarkable’: “The lower-end-of-the-spectrum scores characterise these lovers as fairly stock-standard, and interestingly, they are also the most likely to be male,” Bode explains.  

#2. Intense lovers

The second biggest cluster, intense romantic lovers, applied to 29 per cent of romantic lovers. This group is characterised by a relatively high frequency of sex, the highest intensity, the highest obsessive thinking, and the highest commitment. This cluster most resembles what we may think of as ‘head over heels’ romantic love. 

“These folk are your 'crazy in love' types. They had the highest proportion who fell in love before their romantic relationship even began and are the only group with more females (at 60 per cent) than males,” Bode says.

“Some other notable characteristics of the intense lovers are that they scored the highest on agreeableness, conscientiousness and enjoying work, but had the lowest proportion engaging in risky driving, drinking more coffee and alcohol, and taking more drugs than usual”.

#3. Mild lovers

Making up 20 per cent of lovers, mild – or benign – lovers are characterised by consistently low scores across the spectrum of romantic measures, with the lowest intensity, lowest obsessive thinking, lowest commitment, and lowest frequency of sex.

“These lovers exhibit the lowest intensity of romantic love, obsessive thinking, commitment, and frequency of sex. They also had the lowest extraversion and agreeableness scores,” Bode explains.

“They have fallen in love the greatest number of times, have been in love for the shortest length of time and are most likely to be male and heterosexual”.

#4. Libidinous lovers

The least common type of lovers, libidinous romantic lovers, make up just under 10 per cent of all lovers. While they are characterised by relatively high intensity, relatively high obsessive thinking, and relatively high commitment, their standout characteristic is an extremely high frequency of sex, an average of 10 times per week.

“Among other characteristics, they also had the highest proportion wanting to travel, spending more money than usual and smoking more cigarettes than usual,” Bode says.