When it comes to sources of marital (or relationship) tension, housework, or more so the way we share (or not share) it is up there as one of the big ones.
Unfortunately, in most families still, in this day in age, women tend to carry the bigger burden when it comes to children and home, meaning we often come home from work only to have to get stuck into more work, like hallway floors that need cleaning or a sink full of manky dishes.
It is not hard to see how this, over time anyway, can build tension and resentment. In fact, as it turns out, according to research, having to wash dishes most of the time is the
single biggest source of relationship and sexual discontent for women.
Yikes.
According to a US
Council on Contemporary Families report, new research to be published later this month in Socius looked at household tasks like shopping, doing the laundry and housecleaning. What the researchers found was that sharing the dishwashing responsibility mattered the
most for women in heterosexual relationships;
not sharing the task ended up being most damaging to relationship quality.
See that, guys? That's how much we hate doing the dishes every damn day.
"As of 2006, women who found themselves doing the lion’s share of dishwashing reported significantly more relationship discord, lower relationship satisfaction and less sexual satisfaction than women who split the dishes with their partner," wrote Daniel Carlson, an assistant professor of family and consumer studies at the University of Utah and the lead author of the study.
What this means, of course (and take notes, dads), is that the more you help with dishes, the happier mums are about the relationship—including how satisfied she is with the sex (that means both how often you have sex and the quality of it).
