Sorry to bother the female users of this site, but could you help me out with something? I have been perplexed for some weeks now by the recent well-publicised report that if we men want our missuses to leap on us in a spontaneous frenzy of sexual abandonment, like tigresses ravishing lions, then all we have to do is our fair share of the household chores and sympathetically say 'mmm, I know' and 'oh dear' every time they worry about something (which in the case of Mrs HH is roughly once every 5 minutes). So here's what's perplexing me: I am sure I have been practicing this behaviour since long before this study, but far from receiving unqualified thanks let alone a daily shag-fest, my routine goes something like this:
HH: (to Mrs HH who's in bed at 7.30am) here's the cup of tea I made you darling
MrsHH: don't leave it on the bedside table, take it back downstairs
HH: I've made the kids' breakfast (again)
Mrs HH: yes but you've put too much milk in DS1's cup and why is all this mess here?
HH: I've put the washing in the laundry
Mrs HH: did you spot-spray the stains with Vanish first? No, I thought not
HH: I'm just chopping the vegetables for tea
Mrs HH: that's far too many and don't chop them on there that's the board for the bread and dairy
HH: just tidied up the living room, dear, like I promised
MrsHH: right, so where did you put my glasses?
HH: can I pour you a glass of wine, love?
MrsHH: you've not opened a new bottle, have you?...
...You get the picture...
and as for the listening sympathetically bit, whenever she expounds at length on the issues that concern her - which is usually the school curriculum, the secondary schooling, the teachers at school, the parents at school, the parents not at school etc - she is so well versed and frankly so expert in these subjects that my 'mmm, I knows', and 'oh dears' and 'tut-tuts' are finally greeted with 'anyway there's no point talking to you, you don't know anything about it' (which is harsh though, I admit, more or less fair).
Instead of my day ending with MrsHH whispering lasciviously into my ear that she is going upstairs to put on the new thing she bought from Agent Provocateur, it ends with her calling back down the stairs that she's just going on the computer. And while she's poring over her G and T threads on mumsnet, I spend my time pouring myself G and Ts in front of the telly. So my question is to the ladies in the house: 'where am I going wrong?' Or am I just a statistical variation from the norm of the survey?
PS if MrsHH is reading this, I've just unloaded the dishwasher so you might want to come down now and put the cake tins in the correct cupboard because, yes, I know, I am bound to have put them in the wrong one, again
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