Rom-com culture has trained us to expect at least one life-changing, can’t-eat-can’t-sleep, texting-your-friends-at-2-a.m. love story. The kind that wrecks your focus while you’re in its clutches, then becomes the plot point you bring up at brunch for the next decade.
Well, new research suggests plenty of Americans never get that chapter at all.
A study published in Interpersona drew on data from more than 10,000 single adults in the U.S. and asked one question: In your lifetime, how many times have you been passionately in love? No definition. No examples. Just your own interpretation.
The average answer came out to about two. Not two per decade. Two total.
Even more wild, around 14 percent of respondents said “zero,” meaning about one in seven single adults reported that they’d never experienced passionate love. Another chunk reported one or two experiences, and only about 11 percent said they’d felt it four or more times.
The study frames “passionate love” as that early-stage intensity most people recognize: obsessive thinking, longing when you’re apart, and the sense that everything else in your life takes a backseat. Psychologist Robert Sternberg put passion alongside intimacy and commitment in his 1986 triangular theory of love. Passion runs hot early, then cools off as relationships settle into something steadier.
Age made a difference, but not a huge one. Older adults reported slightly more passionate love experiences, which makes sense because they’ve had more years to date. The increase was small, though. Time alone didn’t guarantee more head-over-heels moments.
The only place where gender really separated the numbers was the heterosexual group. Men reported slightly more passionate love experiences than women. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual participants didn’t follow that pattern.
A few caveats sit in plain sight. The sample focused on single adults, not partnered ones, so the memory lens may skew in a particular direction. The survey also left “passionately in love” up to the respondent, so one person’s “that was intense” becomes another person’s “that was a situationship with good playlists.” The data reflects self-reporting, which always comes with some fuzz.
Still, the numbers hit a nerve because they clash with the cultural script. Passionate love gets marketed as a required life experience, almost like a rite of passage. This research suggests it’s rarer than the movies, and missing it doesn’t make someone broken. It makes them normal in a country that oversells romance and undersells the many other ways a life can feel full.
The post Have You Ever Been Passionately in Love? Many Americans Say No. appeared first on VICE.
