Nadia Bokody: Why married women stop having sex

Married women have been sharing their “turn ons” online - but there’s nothing sexy about this popular TikTok trend, says Nadia Bokody.

I’m worried about straight women.

Every time I think I’ve written the last column I’m going to write about this, the bar for the men who partner with them sinks to an abysmal new low.

Take the TikTok trend captioned, “Things that turn me on as a mum”, in which montages of men performing painfully simple tasks like folding clothes, cooking dinner, and putting nappies on their own babies are synched to a sexy soundtrack and juxtaposed with footage of their eager-eyed wives watching on, barely able to contain their arousal.

The comments sections of these videos are almost as disturbing as the clips themselves – an orgy of women positively charged with erotic excitement collectively exclaim, “#DaddyGoals!” and “Where can I find myself a hubby like that?!!”, punctuating their enthusiasm with heart eye emojis.

The video shows a woman getting turned on … Picture: TikTok@haybaybay1990.

As her husband performs some kind of mundane chore. Picture: TikTok@haybaybay1990.

You could be forgiven for thinking this was satire – that it mimics the same kind of hyperbolic praise you’d expect a child to receive from a parent after completing their homework – but poking fun of men’s limited participation in housework has become a depressing kind of signature for women on the internet in 2022.

Of course, we aren’t taught to be nonchalant about men’s scant contributions to domestic labour.

We’re conditioned to believe the mere act of being chosen by a man is in and of itself the highest form of acknowledgment of our existence. That, securing a man for marriage is so covetable, it nullifies any self-sacrifice or degradation a woman may have to endure as part of being able to call herself a wife.

Sure, your husband almost never puts the toilet seat down and still thinks it’s cute to leave a halo of his soiled undies on the floor around the laundry basket, however – YOU HAVE A HUSBAND! So what if you have to mother him every so often?

It’s a popular TikTok video joke, but there's a dark truth to the trend. Picture: TikTok@haybaybay1990.

It’s not like he doesn’t care. He’d truly LOVE to help you out with the groceries. But he’s just a man … How is he supposed to know what brand of milk to get, or navigate the complex task of determining the appropriate Tupperware container to stow the couscous away in when he gets home with everything??

I mean, like, he COULD clean the bathroom, but he’s just not as well versed as you are on the sophisticated mechanics of swirling a brush around a toilet bowl and wiping Windex across reflective surfaces. You know you’ll just have to redo it anyway.

Never send a man to do a woman’s job! Amirite, ladies??!

This infantilisation of men isn’t by accident, and it’s certainly not because women get off on mothering their grown adult spouses. It’s the result of wilful, learned behaviour – something some psychologists are now referring to as “weaponised incompetence”.

Originally coined “strategic incompetence” in a 2007 Wall Street Journal article, weaponised incompetence is the act of feigning an inability to understand or complete a task (though it can also include doing the task but deliberately carrying it out poorly), so as never to be asked to do it again.

And it’s so prevalent, the most recent Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (Hilda) survey found that, on average, women do 21 hours additional unpaid labour each week than men.

Sex writer and news.com.au columnist Nadia Bokody argues that a man’s inability to do basic household tasks could be a sign of “weaponised incompetence”. Picture: Instagram

This was true even when the woman was the breadwinner in the couple, so the old “but he works really hard to bring home the bacon” trope isn’t actually accurate. (This is not even to mention the emotionally, mentally, and physically intensive labour stay-at-home mums carry out in the home that’s still ignorantly deemed “not actual work”.)

The survey, which was conducted in 2019, revealed this gendered gap is most pronounced in heterosexual couples with dependent children, and that the biggest form of unpaid work was housework, closely followed by child-rearing.

The impact of this unequal division of labour? Coupled-up women reported feeling stressed either “often” or “almost always”.

The link between stress and a decline in libido has been extensively studied and is widely recognised, and yet, with so many married mums taking on the burden of most of the domestic labour, on top of being expected to additionally step in as surrogate parents to their own spouses, we continue to treat women’s loss of interest in sex after marriage as biological. (Read: women aren’t interested in sex anyway, they just have it to get men to commit.)

In reality, research repeatedly shows women have a comparable interest in sex to men (take, for example, this study, which found men consistently underestimate how much sex their wives want). And, to date at least, there’s no scientifically proven phenomenon whereby a wedding ring has the power to spontaneously switch off the female libido.

There is, however, science to suggest the role women are expected to take on when they cohabit with a man is extremely detrimental to their sex lives.

In fact, a 2017 study published in the British Medical Journal Open found women are twice as likely as men to lose interest in sex when living with a male partner. Re-read that last part: when living with a male partner.

When women take on the extra household load their partners won’t do, it can hurt their sex lives as well. Picture: Instagram

It’s almost as if there’s nothing wrong with women’s libidos at all; that the real issue is the disinterest the men they partner with show in meaningfully contributing to their lives.

But a sex-starved, unappreciated existence doesn’t have to be as good as it gets.

There are two solutions: quit infantilising your husband and require he join you as an equal participant in the relationship (also while you’re at it, for the love of Oprah, please, STOP POSTING MEMES ABOUT IT. If I never see another man folding laundry to Ginuwine’s ‘Pony’ on my timeline again, it’ll be too soon).

Or you can walk away. Because marital vows or not, you didn’t sign up to be a grown man’s mother.

And if you’re a guy who’s feeling particularly triggered right now, this column is definitely about you. Sorry mate, but the jig is up. We know you understand how cleaning the bathroom works. So, if you’re hoping to get laid any time soon, grab that toilet brush and start scrubbing – like, properly this time. And don’t expect anyone to make a TikTok about it.

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