Star Wars is a romantic turn-off and a relationship killer, according to the experts – but only to women.

Those schoolboy crushes on Carrie Fisher cavorting about in her gold bikini were fine for males of a certain age, but most women don’t want a bloke to be still going on about it in his 40s.

On the eve of the release of Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens, Zoosk, a dating site, asked people about their attitudes to the films and romance, probing that nerdish fascination many, normally right-thinking, men exhibit for the space epic.

And while it seems that women are from Venus, a lot of men apparently hale from Tatooine rather than Mars.

The poll of 1000 people found a quarter of Australian women would not go out with a Star Wars fan, one in three avoided them and another 40 per cent would try to change them if they were in a relationship. Furthermore, a bloke with Star Wars bedsheets (and, yes, we are talking about adults here) was unsurprisingly an absolute passion eviscerator for two out of five women.

In stark contrast 55 per cent of men said they would jump at the chance to sleep with a woman who believed in the Force (…we can add that to all the other stuff we don’t understand about each other).

Now, I know both couples who turned their weddings into Star Wars-themed events and mates whose intended vetoed the same. So there is proof Star Wars diehards are breeding.

But as a bellwether for relationships the film was always going to be an awkwardly complicated thing. I mean, there was that Luke and Leia thing early on. Thank God someone set them straight. They could have had a two-headed Jedi child.

Queen Amidala and Anakin – bloody and destined to fail in a Game of Thrones-type way. Even Luke’s aunt and uncle – his parental role models – got burnt to death by stormtroopers. Grisly.

In fact droids R2D2 and C3PO seem to have had the most close-to-stereotypical relationship in the films, one marked by attachment, bickering and no sex (that we know of).

But what does all that say about men and women?

Why as men are we more inclined to escape into Star Wars, or cars, or sport, or gambling or drinking?

Are the pressures of the world so great we turn escapism into a lifestyle?

And is that what the turn-off to women is? Not so much the nerdiness, but the lack of focus on stuff that matters and on getting things done.

So as you sit in the darkness of the cinema watching Star Wars VII blast across the screen – and most certainly not thinking about your career, or your family or what Syrian refugees will be doing this Christmas – ponder for a moment at least what it’s doing to your love life.