Chodorow describes studies that show that men fall in love emotionally while women fall in love rationally. Women who are more economically dependent on men, must make sensible calculations in love and marriage which they mask with romanticism. This goes back to the distant but idealized father. Their relationship with their father prepares them for the relationship they will have in marriage. Their development also provides an emotional distance and rationality in relationships with men in comparison to close and emotional relationships with women.
Women have other relationships and therefore other resources.
Men play a part in this as well by repressing their affective needs as a result of their own oedipal resolution. According to several psychoanalysts, because of these repressed needs, men are often intolerant of those who can express them, namely women. This makes heterosexual marriage difficult. Women, who remain erotically heterosexual, are encouraged to look elsewhere for relational needs. She may do this through relationships with other women or by have children.