Why women don’t mind ‘needy’ men

IT is classic dating advice – to play it cool and avoid being too needy.

But while clingy women might send their partner running for the hills, men can get away with it, research suggests.

Men with insecure partners are less satisfied with their relationship and suffer stress from constantly having to reassure their other half, a survey found.

But rather than being put off by clinginess in men, women said they remain just as satisfied. The researchers suggest women compensate for their partner’s emotional outbursts and want to care for him even more.

Lead author Ashley Cooper, a PhD student in human sciences at Florida State University, also suggested that women who feel needy are more likely to tell their loved one about their worries, meaning men are more affected by how their partner is feeling. In contrast, men tend to bottle up how they feel, limiting the impact any anxiety on their part can have on their girlfriend’s own happiness.

The study, which asked 157 couples to fill out questionnaires, found that men tended to show stress from this behaviour while women were more likely to accept it and alter their behaviour accordingly.

Writing in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, the researchers said that women ‘may be more skilled’ in buffering the harmful effects of a boyfriend’s attachment anxiety by ‘developing behaviours that compensate for the behaviours of their anxious partner’.