Women's Warped Sense of Time?

What does a lesbian bring on her second date?

A moving van.

This joke is funny simply because it's so painfully accurate. It's the stereotypical lesbian image: Girl and Girl meet, fall in love, start wearing each other's clothes, move in, adopt cats. All in the space of 6 months. But stereotypes are generally rooted in reality, and this one no less so. Based on personal experiences and observing some of my gay female friends, I would have to conclude that the stereotype is not too far off the mark. As a group, we have a tendency to move fast.

During a recent phone conversation about this topic with Jo (yes, the hot girl I mentioned a few posts ago), we both acknowledged that the two weeks that had passed since her visit, did appear so much longer than just two weeks. And it made me wonder whether maybe women simply have a different and unrealistic perception of time. If women perceive time differently than men do, then the time-perception of a lesbian couple is bound to be skewed. Perhaps men and women in heterosexual relationships balance each other out in this aspect, allowing them to move according to a more accurate timescale of relationship-events. While the warped-perception-of-time of two women in a gay relationship would merely aggravate the situation and therefore enhance the speed at which things move forward within the relationship.

So, I decided to browse Science Direct for a while to try and hunt down a few publications on gender differences in time perception. I found lots of publications that seem to confirm that women indeed tend to OVER-estimate duration of time, while men generally have an accurate sense of the time passed.

In light of this, it's probably no coincidence that the words "Bed" and "Death" are consistently preceded by the word "Lesbian". Lesbian Bed Death is a term used to describe the phenomenon of declining sexual activity about a year into a lesbian relationship. It's a bit of a scare-mongering term in the lesbian community and whether this concept is purely mythological or not, it is still highly debated both socially and academically. I personally think the whole phenomenon is largely exaggerated. The concept of the declining sex life is as much a straight as a gay issue in long-term relationships and depends highly on the individual couple. But I suppose that the warped sense of time could account for some instances of Lesbian Bed Death. If women systematically over-estimate the duration of time passed, then a year might indeed feel like a lot longer and I would guess that the emotional timeline would therefore reach the general long-term slump a tad sooner too.

Whatever the case, gay women seem to have developed a good sense of humor about this little "quirk" of ours to "move fast", as it's become a bit of a standing joke within the community. I'd say humor is always the first step towards awareness. Whether or not the awareness will be able to restrain us from renting out the U-Haul on a second date, is another matter entirely ;-)


References:

- Wittmann M et al. 2003, "Sex differences in perception of temporal order", Percept Mot Skills 96(1):105-12
- Krishnan L et al. 1984, "Perceived time: its relationship with locus of control, filled versus unfilled time intervals, and perceiver's sex", J Gen Psychol 110:275-81.
-Dolu N et al. 2004, "Sex-related differences in time estimation and the role of expectancy", Int J Neurosci 114(7):805-15
-Eisler AD et al. 1994, "Subjective time scaling: influence of age, gender, and Type A and Type B behavior", Chronobiologia 21(3-4):185-200
-Espinosa-Fernandez L et al. 2003, "Age-related changes and gender differences in time estimation", Acta Psychol (Amst) 112(3):221-32