Women want a husband, not a man-child to take care of.
A recent article online talks of a study which suggests that women are sexually attracted to men who are handy and help around the house. I have to say, from personal experience, this is true. I do small chores for some of the Little Old Ladies on the island - installing a light fixture, fixing a computer, or whatever. They swoon when I do this and actually say out loud how "sexy" it is to have a handy-man about (even if he is gay, I guess).
What's up with that?
Well, I understood once I read that articles linked above. So many men get comfortable, after a few years of marriage, in letting the wife do the dishes, the laundry, wash the floors, clean the bathroom, and generally take care of the house. Maybe back in the day when Hubby worked 9-to-5 and Mom stayed home, that was an equitable arrangement. But today, with dual income households, it makes no sense that a husband should sit on his ass drinking beer and watching "the game" while his wife has to do all the heavy lifting.
Men like that turn back into children and their wives become the new Mommy - making them peanut-butter sandwiches and plates of chicken tendies. It is hard to be sexually attracted to an overweight, middle-aged, man-baby. So the wife is less sexually attracted to the husband, and they have less intimacy, and as a result, they drift apart.
It is funny, because some men, particularly those who subscribe to the "Alpha Male" or "Red Pill" community, would argue that doing housework is "women's work" and laying about and watching television (or playing video games) while their wife fetches them snacks and beers, is the definition of assertive maleness. Of course, most of the men who subscribe to this nonsense live with their actual mothers, so their theories about being "Alpha Males" are just that - theories. They will never live to see them in practice.
Of course, this "science" is based on surveys, and as I noted before, surveys are always suspect. Other surveys (and they seem to come out every few years and make the papers during slow news days) say the opposite - that men who do dishes are viewed as she-males and get less sex (except maybe the kinky kind, I guess?). Surveys are always suspect, because people lie on them and moreover, they don't always provide accurate answers even if they are not intentionally lying. How many times do you have sex per month? It is not something most people keep track of. And differences of 1.2 to 0.7 times per month fall with statistical variation - and don't represent some major trend.
Maybe it depends on the kind of work a man does. If the wife does the dishes and laundry and the man cleans the gutters and patches the roof (while wearing a flannel shirt, tight blue jeans, and work boots) he may be able to entice his mate - or start an Only Fans page, I guess.
From a personal perspective, I think it pays to divide up the daily chores based on who is best at doing what. If one partner is just sitting around in sloth, it creates problems for both. The lazy partner feels weak and worthless, the working partner feels abused and put-upon. Bother are recipes for depression, neither a recipe for a romantic evening.
I feel sorry for some heterosexual couples sometimes - it seems they live in different worlds - "her" SUV and "his" pickup truck, separate checking accounts, separate televisions, and separate bathrooms. Their days are spent apart, their leisure activities with their "Bros" and "Gal Pals" - their lives only intersecting when they sleep. And sometimes, not even then.
I think the answer is to take sexism and misogyny out of the equation. Doing your laundry or the dishes isn't "women's work" or "men's work" but adult work that should be done by everyone once they are old enough to work the washing machine or the dishwasher (or the vacuum cleaner, dust mop, and whatever). Taking care of yourself and your life is something every adult needs to do for themselves. Living in squalor is not only unattractive, it is bad for your mental health.
Sadly, it seems young men (including myself at the time) are not trained in these household arts. And you see this, in men's dorms (boy's dorms, really) and the apartments of young men just out of college. There is squalor everywhere - pizza boxes and empty beer cans, and dust and filth because Mommy isn't around to clean up after them anymore. I've seen, in some instances, Mommies who do go to their son's apartments to "help tidy up" - which perpetuates the problem.
It's even worse with "bounce-back" kids living in their parent's basement in squalor. I recounted before how a friend of ours had do deal with his 20-something sons moving back home, not working, playing video games all day long, and leaving dishes in the sink. "Helpful Grandma" came over to do them for her grandsons! Grandparents can be so helpful! Helping their grandchildren by buying them a $30,000 3-D printer so they can make gun parts, for example.
Crazy shit.
The problem for women in these cases is that they end up nagging their husbands to help out with these chores, and the husband - trained from birth to not do them - ends up resenting the wife for nagging.
No wonder the divorce rate is so high.
