Do the Dishes, Boys, and You Might Get Lucky

~ Laura

Jeremy S. sent me a link to a great post on Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog a couple of weeks ago, and I've been remiss for not passing it on sooner.

Oliver Wang, a guest poster, pointed to a interesting study of the sex lives of couples. The researchers examined the impact of work, both paid and unpaid, on sexual frequency. In other words, do people who spend lots of time in the office and then do lots of housework have time to get busy in the bedroom? If you folded the sheets, do you want to mess them up later on? If you scrubbed the toilet, do you want to do any other rubbing later on?

Apparently, yes. The researchers found that couples where both partners did work around the house (not entirely equal, but somewhat equally) saw more action than couples where the woman did most of the housework. They found that the busiest couples who worked the most at home and in the office, the go-getters, somehow found the time for each other.

I'm not sure if these go-getters also had children.

When I was working at a policy research center many years ago, a fellow researcher, Sarah, would occasionally talk about the drama of married life. I wasn't yet married to Steve, so I was curious what the future held. She said that she and her husband had a nickname for his kitchen-cleaning duties at the end of the day. They called it foreplay. 

I'm hesitant to go further in my discussion of this study, because the conclusion is so useful. Do the dishes and you'll get laid. It should be a bumper sticker or something.

However, the researchers were off in explaining why there's a correlation between sex lives and housework. They said that people who were really busy in their work and around the home were hyper organized people who made sure to schedule time for date nights. That's probably partially the case. I also think that if you're busy in your career, you're feeling good about yourself. You're cleaning up, because you have an active social life with people coming over for parties. You're happy. And happy people have sex.

UPDATE: Thanks to Feministing for spreadin' the love this way.

Published by Laura

8 thoughts on “Do the Dishes, Boys, and You Might Get Lucky”

  1. And happy people have sex.
    And sex makes people happy! Which leads to more sex, which leads to more happiness. It’s win-win! Seriously, whoever designed this whole marriage thing knew what they were doing.

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  2. As I read it (not very carefully), the correlation holds for both sexes. So ladies, turn off Oprah, make your husband a nice dinner, and he might show you a good time.

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  5. isn’t it also true that households with both partners doing housework are more equal? if both people pull their weight around the house won’t that lead to feeling valued by your partner? more equal relationships –> healthier –> more intimacy

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  6. That would be nice but seems almost too neat. Don’t lots of people eroticize inequality as well as difference?
    I wonder how granular the research is in examining division of labor. Maybe the men are still doing the lifting and yardwork parts and the women the scrubbing and picking up, but the men are doing the former more often and doing “projects” around the house.
    For me the suckiest and most anti-erotic thing is feeling responsible for all the tidying but there’s no way my husband is ever going to be doing much in that realm. He simply doesn’t notice untidiness.

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  8. I’m pretty sure the opposite is true: if I’m doing all the scut work, I’m pissed off much of the time, making me a lousy bed partner.

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