Men Told They Will Get Laid More If They Do the Dishes. Still Can’t Seem to Do the Dishes

New type of foreplay just dropped — doing the dishes. Or laundry. Or any kind of domestic labor for that matter.

A trio of social scientists recently interviewed 706 women who cohabitated with their male partners, and they found that when men don’t do chores around the house, women are far less likely to want to have sex with them. “Women who reported that they performed a large proportion of household labor relative to their partner were significantly more likely to perceive their partners as dependent on them to keep the household functioning, and this in turn was associated with significantly lower desire for their partner,” the researchers wrote in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

To be fair, this isn’t the first time research has indicated that men who pick up around the house enjoy the fruits of their (domestic) labor in the bedroom, which they obviously immediately clean and vacuum afterward. In 2016, a different study found that heterosexual couples who share housework more equally have better sex lives compared to those who don’t. It would seem, then, that Mr. Cleans of all types can get it.

And yet, in the six years since this original study, nothing has appeared to change. Women perform about 2.5 more hours of household labor compared to men, and more mental and emotional labor as well. It’s almost as if more “traditional” men prefer doing nothing to having sex. 

An even bigger turn-off in the current study was that the men in question were fathers, which meant that their female partners were forced to clean up after them and their shared progeny. Or as the researchers concluded, “Inequitable proportion of household labor may contribute to a burdensome blurring of mother and partner roles, whereby partners are perceived as recipients of caregiving, akin to dependent children. As a result, women may experience lower desire for partners who are perceived in dependent-like ways.”

So if you want any chance of getting her out of her clothes, start by picking up the ones that are already on the floor.