A new university study has found that women agree to live with a partner because they see it as a step towards marriage, while men agree because they think they’ll get more sex.
Let’s pause for a moment while you digest this stunning news. What would we do without universities, eh? Perhaps they could reveal the defecation arrangements of bears next.
What would have been more useful here was a study into who turns out to be right.
Do most women get a ring on their finger and most men unlimited legover after moving in together? Because scientific research from the University of Drunken Pub Conversations suggests both should prepare for disappointment. Especially the men.
It’s touching that men believe life will be one long shagathon once they share a front door, but evidence suggests it’s more likely to be one long shopathon for scatter cushions. And salad servers. Plus rows over bathroom “atrocities”.
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As someone once sort of said, “Domesticity is the enemy of sexual mesmerism.” Or in other words, once you share a house, away go a woman’s stockings and silk teddy nighties and out come the grey knickers and flannelette Tesco pyjamas. Along with a “Can’t we do it later?” when the morning approach is made. Men, meanwhile, regard cohabiting as licence to fart freely.
Look, I’m only repeating what I’ve heard. And every stand-up comedian’s act since 1972.
Of course, it isn’t always the case that, as Martin Amis said, eventually marriage is “a sibling relationship marked by occasional, rather regrettable episodes of incest”.
Sometimes couples stay at it like rabbits for decades. But given that Cherie Blair recently boasted that even after 35 years Tony “still excites me, in all possible ways”, perhaps it’s less distressing and easier on the stomach if we all pretend otherwise.