Jake Gyllenhaal, Justin Beiber, Seal, Professor Green, Joe Jonas, Nathan Sykes, Adam Garcia and George Clooney are among the celebrities opening up on the mysterious world of falling in love. The November issue of Cosmopolitan explores how men’s attitudes to falling in love changes, from their formative years to being a fully-fledged male. Here are some titbits:
Justin Bieber, 17
“You just know when you’re falling in love. It’s not complicated; it just happens. You know when you see an old couple who have clearly been together 50-plus years? I want to be in love like that when I’m older.”
Nathan Sykes, 18
“Falling in love is so confusing for a teenage lad. You think it’s happening to you but you never really know because you’ve got nothing to compare it to. Most boys are ready to fall in love at my age. I’m awful at making enough time for girls - I’m having a ball working and going clubbing.”
Joe Jonas, 22
“Falling in love can hit you hard, however old you are. All the emotions you experience are indescribable. It’s kind of like being on stage performing - you feel as if it’s the only thing going on in that moment, and that is an amazing feeling. For me I’m pickier now about the people I date, and I know what I’m looking for. It gets more complicated as you get older. You never know when the time will come to meet The One.”
Professor Green,27
“I’m closer to 30 now and I have a better understanding of what I want in a relationship and how wrong it is to waste someone’s time. There’s no point leading someone on if you can’t see a future together. It wasn’t hard to fall in love with Candy [McCulloch]. I love everything about her. She made me feel bad in the beginning because she’s such a nice person. I’m quite grumpy so sometimes she’ll say, ‘Can you be a bit nicer?’ She’s not a doormat; she’ll kick me up the bum when she needs to.”
“I don’t have any great relationship role models - I was brought up by my nan whose husband left her, and my dad cheated on my mum and left her. That can make you apprehensive about falling in love but it also made me want to make a better job of it myself.”
Jake Gyllenhaal, 30
“The wonderful part about falling love is the time spent naked...the times spent intimate like that.”
Adam Garcia, 38
“The one thing that never changes with age is the feeling you get when you fall in love. It’s an overwhelming reaction you can feel in your heart. You’re unable to wipe that person from your mind”
“In my early thirties I had my heart broken by a girl and it made me more wary about falling in love. It wasn’t a massive betrayal, but I’d had my heart set on that relationship, so when she ended things it really hurt.”
Seal, 48
“I think most men are useless before the age of 40. If I’d met my wife Heidi in my thirties, it probably wouldn’t have worked, due to my immaturity. I was 40 when we met - she was a fashion model and three weeks pregnant [by her ex Flavio Briatore] although she didn’t yet know, and I was a singer in a profession not known for people being responsible. But when we fell in love we saw something in each other that transcended everything else.”
“I look at my wife as my best friend, the mother of our children second and my wife and lover third; because as wonderful as love is, it can get curly pretty quickly. But when you respect your best friend there is a line which you rarely, if ever, cross.”
George Clooney, 50
“We all like to believe in Cinderella - that she comes to the ball and their eyes meet and she’s perfect for him and he’s perfect for her. I don’t know that it necessarily works all the time, but it happened to my parents. My father was MC of the Miss Kentucky pageant and my mum was in it. He took her on a date and asked her to marry him immediately. They’re still together, so I know love at first sight can work.”
Full interviews appear in the November issue of Cosmopolitan UK, on sale now