Study: Couples Who Share Housework Have More Sex

We really wanted that headline to read "Couples Who Clean Together Cream Together" but we thought it a little tasteless, even for us. But we did find a new study that found, for husbands and wives alike, the more housework each did, the more often they had sex with their spouse. And not because watching someone clean a toilet bowl is sexy.

Scrubbing the floor is no aphrodisiac, and seeing your spouse doing it usually isn't either. "My husband loves doing laundry, yet I don't get any thrill out of his doing it," says Chicago writer Julie Danis. And "I don't think he thinks it's sexy when I go around gathering the detritus of his daily life."

But for some high achievers who take a "work hard, play hard" approach to life, researchers say, working hard in one domain produces more energy for others. The study also found a correlation between hours spent on paid work and the frequency of sex in marriage.

"Rather than compromise their sex life" because of time demands at work or at home, "this group of go-getters seems to make sex a priority," says Constance Gager, lead researcher and an assistant professor of family and child studies at Montclair State University, Montclair, N.J. The study doesn't measure what proportion of spouses fall into this group, but she believes "they are on the leading edge of couples we expect to see more of in the future."

Many husbands and wives I interviewed offered an additional explanation—that housework may be a proxy for a general willingness to invest in shared interests, a symbol of commitment to home and hearth. Perhaps "working on the same task … makes the couple remember why they married—to be on the same team, to build a life," Ms. Danis says.

Tom Doran, a Plymouth, Mich., engineer, says doing housework "promotes friendship and intimacy" for him and his wife, an executive assistant. And John Rogitz, a San Diego attorney who has been married for 30 years, says, "If you're both around doing housework, that also means you are alone together, and in a place where both are relaxed and comfortable." He adds, "It's pretty hard to have sex when you're not together in a place that permits it." [WSJ]

Does that mean our choices—if/when we ever decide to marry—will be living in a dirty house having no sex or living in a clean house and having lots of spotless surfaces on which to fuck? Pass the mop!