Unsuitable and the Lady Chatterley Argument

This is a bit awful!

If your man irons, puts groceries away, does a load of washing or vacuums the house – apparently you desire him less.

Can this be right?  

Lori Gottlieb (bestselling author of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough) has a new theory.  She reckons an equal marriage means less sex.  What?

Here’s her argument:  the more couples share childcare and household jobs – the more progress that was made toward breaking down sexual imbalance in all things – then the less sex they were likely to have.  It’s a plot – has to be a plot.  Men are behind this.

It’s reported she says, Fifty Shades…is escapism for a generation of women who had won the battle of having husbands and partners share domestic and family responsibilities, but who perhaps lusted toward them a little less as a result.  Are you telling me having a man scrub the bathroom isn’t sexy?

And apparently there is research to back this up – oh dear.

Research suggests that when men in heterosexual couples do traditionally ‘feminine’ chores, such as washing up and laundry, then the couples had less frequent sex. The study is called “Egalitarianism, Housework and Sexual Frequency in Marriage”, which appeared in the 2013 issue of American Sociological Review.  It’s a mouthful.

This research found that when men in heterosexual couples did what researchers characterised as “feminine” chores – folding laundry or vacuuming – then couples had sex 1.5 fewer times per month than those with husbands or partners who did what were characterised as masculine chores, such as heavy lifting or mending the car.  Vacuuming or sex, vacuuming or sex?

The study showed that it was not just the frequency of physical intimacy that was affected – at least from the woman’s point of view. The greater the husband’s share of masculine chores, the greater his wife’s reported sexual satisfaction – the Lady Chatterley argument.  Which clearly means the concept should be banned like the book once was.

The study concluded: “The less gender differentiation, the less sexual desire.” In other words, as Gottlieb claimed, “in an attempt to be gender-neutral, we may have become gender-neutered”.   It’s a travesty.

Well, I’m, not buying it.  In Unsuitable Reece and Audrey have swapped roles.  Reece is child carer and house-husband to Audrey’s corporate executive.  And it works out just fine thank you very much all gender neutraled with absolutely no lick of neutering.

I’d give you the page numbers for the parts where neutering isn’t part of the equation but that might be a cheat.  You need to experience the whole gender/job flip manic attraction from the beginning.

But here’s a snippet:

If he took a deeper breath, if that shirt lifted, she’d see the hard outline of his Adonis belt. As it was, his jeans were suspended slightly between his hipbones, and a ridge of black cotton showed her the edge of his underwear. The rest was a dark cavern between blue denim and black cotton. It was an invitation shaped like her hand, a place she dare not go and keep her sanity.

If she thought she was betraying him by watching him dance, by being hyper aware of his body, she was virtually sexually assaulting him now. Every one of her senses was on heat. Every breath she took was short and straining. Her hands were fists. Her centre was liquid, her core was an unsettled squirm of spinning want.

And I’m not telling you what domestic chore he’d just completed!

Unsuitable arrives October 27 and is available for pre-order on Amazon

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