The Weird Connection Between Household Chores and Sex, According to a New Study - VICE
In a relationship, there’s an expectation that everyone involved needs to pull their own weight for the venture to thrive. A new study out of Japan published in the Journal of Happiness Studies found that, actually, women love it when guys don’t do much of anything.
Study Finds detailed the research, wherein researchers tracked 1,091 married women to see how chore distribution impacted marriage. You would assume that a husband picking up a mop would act as an instant aphrodisiac, given the old stereotypes. Yet, the data showed that for working women holding egalitarian views, sex was most strongly linked to overall happiness during the years they personally handled about 90 percent of the cooking, cleaning, and laundry.
There is, of course, a catch: that eye-opening find is actually a rather depressing coping mechanism. It should be no surprise that women don’t secretly crave being exploited by a lazy bum, lifting his legs off the coffee table so they can vacuum beneath them as he assumes that begrudging bit of physical contact is a hint she’s ready for sex.
Over 80 percent of the surveyed women carried the vast majority of the household workload. When a woman desperately wants an equal partnership but ends up saddled with a man who treats scrubbing a toilet as impossible, the relationship strains and resentment builds. In these crumbling relationships, physical intimacy acts as a comforting Band-Aid that offsets some of the misery of their partner not pulling their own weight.
When husbands actually stepped up and split the chores 50-50, women didn’t need sex to serve as an emergency relief valve since there is a solid, consistent baseline of happiness to work from.
It all sounds like a recipe for some truly miserable sex that is a manifestation of a truly miserable relationship. Guys, you can avoid this horrible life by doing the one thing the people closest to you have been begging you to do since you were a child: just do your dang chores, because now instead of an allowance, it’s sex.
