Looking to Improve Your Sex Life? Do Chores with Your Partner

Cleaning a dirty toilet, removing hair from the drain, picking up after the dog and scraping crustiness out of your microwave are not romantic tasks. In lots of ways they are gross and undesirable. So, isn’t it strange then that performing such tasks could lead to a better sex life with your partner?

In August, the Journal of Marriage and Family will publish a study indicating couples that divvy up household chores evenly thrive better in the bedroom than those who don’t.

“The association between a non-traditional division of labour at home and couples’ sexual satisfaction and frequency has changed dramatically over the past two decades,” explained the study’s lead author Sharon Sassler, a professor of policy analysis and management at Cornell University. “By 2006, couples who reported sharing housework fairly equally, with the man doing more than a third and up to 65% of the housework, reported having sex significantly more often than did couples where the woman (or the man) did 65% or more of the housework.”

How does scrubbing the toilet, or taking part in other chores, actually help?

“The evidence shows that when men do a greater share of housework, women’s perceptions of relationship fairness and satisfaction are greater,” continued Sassler.

In a recent TIME magazine article, historian Stephanie Coontz shared her thoughts on this subject, stating: “Where difference was once the basis of desire, equality is increasingly becoming erotic.”

She added: “In marriages of the 1950s and 1960s, wives often reported having sex more often than they wanted because they were dependent on their husbands. “Now that women feel free to say ‘no,’ they are more likely to say ‘yes’ when they feel the relationship is fair.”

Doesn’t house cleaning seem so much more worthwhile now?

-Adam Grant