on Feb 26th, 2006A Clean House = A Healthy Sexual Relationship (Who knew?)
This sounds like a fun job. Pack up your laptop and clothes and hit the road asking men what they think of marriage, sex, women, housework and the big C word, commitment. Neil Chethik did it without regret. In fact, he produced a book that details his findings so you don’t need to ask yourself how you feel. Just read the book and compare notes.
Here’s one little insight that just might get you, um, horizontal tonight: clean the fricking house! Chethik found that a woman who felt her husband contributed his fair share of housecleaning was more likely to have a healthy sexual relationship. So get down on your hands and knees and start scrubbing that bathroom floor, sweep the kitchen, take out the garbage, and most important of all, try washing your wife’s car. That should get you bonus love points. If all else fails, try the nuclear option: buy her a new house!
VoiceMale : What Husbands Really Think About Their Marriages, Their Wives, Sex, Housework, and Commitment
by Neil Chethik
In their own words, married men reveal what they really think about marriage, sex, housework, commitment, and intimacy.
Much has been written about what women want from their relationships and marriages. But what men want has remained a mystery — until now. In his groundbreaking new book, VoiceMale, author and journalist Neil Chethik reveals surprising truths about married men and challenges many of the myths about men that prevent couples from creating strong and lasting relationships.
Based on a landmark survey of American husbands across the country, VoiceMale reveals that most men are not commitment-phobic, that they don’t have sex on their minds all the time, and that they are willing to talk frankly about their relationships — just not in the same way women do. Men have complex inner lives, just like women. But they have a unique, masculine style of loving that focuses more on doing than talking, on sharing space rather than sharing feelings, and on side-by-side closeness rather than face-to-face intimacy.
In VoiceMale, Chethik weaves together real-life stories and survey results to create a unique portrait of the American husband. Men share their thoughts on the myriad issues that married couples face: commitment, money, careers, children, in-laws, and more. They openly discuss the character traits they seek in a woman when they’re looking to marry. And they speak honestly about their struggles adjusting to marriage, raising children, balancing work and family, keeping marital sex exciting, and avoiding infidelity.
Chethik spent two years traveling across the country, talking with men of different ages, religions, and ethnic backgrounds, in urban centers and rural towns. His interviewees had been married for anywhere from a few weeks to as long as seventy-two years. He notes the enormous changes in American marriage since the 1960s and explores how men have tried to adjust to them — sometimes successfully, often not.
In a national survey of nearly 300 American husbands and in-depth interviews with 70 men in all stages of marriage, Chethik explores what makes them happy and what frustrates them. The encouraging news: 93 percent of all husbands he spoke to said that they’d marry the same woman again given the chance. But while 82 percent are satisfied with their sex lives, Chethik reports that men are sometimes “astounded by how long women can go without thinking about sex.”
The Married Male Mind
A new book on American husbands reveals the reasons they get married, why they stay married and how housework is directly related to their sexual satisfaction
By Susanna Schrobsdorff
Newsweek, February. 16, 2006