Image source: (Fitsnews)

BY JENNIFER MECKLES

You're watching multisource health news analysis from Newsy.

The stereotype goes -- If you ask a man if he wants to cuddle -- chances are he’ll just roll his eyes... then roll over.
But a new study reveals men might be bigger softies than we think.
Morning news teams went wild with this story -- Here’s WYFF:

FEMALE ANCHOR: “A new study reveals dudes... like to cuddle! In an international survey -- more than 1000 couples: Holding hands or simply liking to be near the other person was more important to men than women. Couples in the survey for a long time, too -- an average of 25 years.”
MALE ANCHOR: “We’ve been outed, as they say!”

Those results will be published in the August Issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior -- and cover everything from cuddling, to relationship happiness, to sexual satisfaction.

It has men blushing, and women, especially those with a microphone, doubtful.
Here’s what the morning ladies at KNXV think:

ANCHOR 1: “I don’t know that men really like it, as much -- I think they pretend a lot of the time because they think its going to go further, but I don’t think they’re really into the cuddling as much as we are.”
ANCHOR 2: “Yeah, I would have to agree with you, about the part of it going past the cuddling, at least the hopes of it anyway!”

Still need statistical proof? The study shows cuddle-time is directly correlated with length of relationship -- growing exponentially higher after a couple spends two decades together. Here’s KOCO’s snarky response:

MALE ANCHOR: "Couples who participated in this survey were together an average of 25 years."
FEMALE ANCHOR: “So maybe once they got to the 25 year point, that’s when men started to have emotions?”
MALE ANCHOR: “Wait a minute, what the survey is saying is that you women can sometimes be cold.”
FEMALE ANCHOR: “You women? Oh he’s about to get it.”

The survey studied couples from Japan, Brazil, the US, Germany and Spain. TIME reports which country takes the lead in... love:

“The study found that Japanese couples were significantly happier with their relationships than American couples, who were in turn happier than couples from Brazil and Spain. The Japanese were also more likely to report sexual satisfaction than Americans: Japanese men in particular were 2.61 times more sexually satisfied than American men.”

But enough about the men -- Japanese and Brazilian women were more likely to report sexual satisfaction than their American counterparts. And, as WNYW reports -- the ladies are looking for a little something extra:

“Now lets talk about the ladies. In a reversal of stereotypes, studies found women might actually be the ones yearning for the hot, steamy sex. And the longer the relationship, and the better the sex, and the happier she is.”

Finally to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, who -- as usual -- gets the “Last Word.” Due to “statistical outliers,” he’s skeptical.

“When word of this survey came our way, we immediately noticed one glaring piece of data. Although on average couples had sex approximately six times over the four week study, one male respondent allegedly had sex 81 times over the same time period: an average of just under three times per day.”