I have a friend — let's call her Emma — who falls completely, desperately in love every single time she meets someone new. We've all sat through the familiar speech: she's never felt this way before, this one is definitely different, this is absolutely The One. For the twentieth time. Then there's my other friend, Claire, who is her polar opposite. By her own admission, she has never really been in love — not even on her wedding day. She loves her husband, she says, but "never felt as swept away as I did over a boyband at age twelve."
So how many times do we actually fall in love?
Emma and Claire represent two extremes most of us recognize. But thanks to a large-scale American study, we now have a real answer to that question — not a romantic guess, but actual data.
The Kinsey Institute surveyed more than ten thousand people between the ages of 19 and 99, asking them how many times in their lives they had experienced passionate, all-consuming love. The results were striking — and more nuanced than most people would expect.
There was no significant difference in how often heterosexual, gay, and bisexual participants had fallen in love. Older respondents reported falling in love slightly more often than younger adults, which suggests that while most of us experience our great loves early in life, it can absolutely happen again at 50, 60, or beyond. Men reported falling in love marginally more often than women, though the difference was small and most pronounced between heterosexual men and heterosexual women.
But what counts as "love"?
Critics of the study pointed out a valid concern: participants weren't given a precise definition of love before answering. The researchers described it as the early, intense phase of attraction — that state of powerful desire, emotional fixation, and deep longing for another person. This is distinct from the quieter "companionate love" that characterizes long-term relationships built on stability, friendship, and shared history.
Skeptics wondered how many respondents confused genuine love with limerence, physical infatuation, or obsessive longing — and whether those experiences were being counted as love.
Limerence, a term introduced by American psychologist Dorothy Tennov in the 1970s, describes an intense emotional state in which a person becomes obsessively fixated on an idealized version of someone else. It's often one-sided, compulsive, and accompanied by physical symptoms — a fluttering stomach, trembling, sweating, a racing heart. Tennov argued that limerence frequently develops as a result of childhood emotional neglect or trauma, making it a very different experience from mutual, grounded love.
To minimize this confusion, the study specifically asked participants to count only those loves that felt rare, life-altering, and had a lasting impact on who they became.
The answer: surprisingly specific
The result? On average, people experience passionate love 2.05 times in their lifetime. Yes, that decimal point is oddly precise — but here's how the numbers actually broke down:
- 28% of people said they had only fallen in love once
- 30% had fallen in love twice
- 11% had fallen in love four or more times
- 14% said they had never been in love at all
So where does that leave Emma and Claire? By these numbers, Emma — with her endless string of great loves — sits comfortably in that 11%. Claire, who has never felt swept away, belongs to the 14%. And me? Solidly in the 30% who've had two great loves and are quietly hoping there might still be a third somewhere out there.
The takeaway isn't that love is rare or that you only get one shot at it. It's something more reassuring: most of us get more than one chance — and for some, the most profound love of their life comes long after they thought that door had closed.
