'I'd rather mop the floor than have sex with my husband!' Why one in three Brits see sex as just another chore

The end of another long day. Like thousands of women across the country I have spent the evening on a treadmill of duty — preparing dinner, ferrying children around, policing homework and then, finally, sorting laundry for the morning.

Now, as the Ten O’clock news finishes, I wipe my last surface and switch on the dishwasher. The house is blissfully quiet. Then a voice — my husband’s — calls  hopefully from the top of the stairs: ‘Are you coming to bed now?’  

Standing there, dishcloth in hand, my heart actually sinks. This is the moment when I know that my day is far from finished. There is still one, last, conjugal chore to be performed.

And before you all shout at once, I know that sex is not a job to be ticked off my never-ending list of things to do. But, boy, does it often feel that way! And according to a national study released last week, I know I am far from alone in dreading my husband’s advances at bedtime. 

Benenden Healthcare Society, a health and wellbeing mutual organisation, surveyed 2,000 adults and revealed that one in three Brits finds sex a chore, with many claiming they would rather ‘read a book’.

I can think of hundreds of things I’d rather do at bedtime than have sex with my poor, long-suffering husband, Keith. Sometimes it’s sleep, other times it’s watching re-runs of Grey’s Anatomy.

There have even been occasions when I have opted to mop the kitchen floor over love-making because, quite simply, it requires less input.

And before you all accuse me of being a frigid old bag, I know that many of my female married friends feel the same way.

‘It’s the nights when I come to bed and can hear him in the bathroom gurgling with mouthwash and “freshening” that I start to panic,’ one friend admits. ‘Sometimes I manage to creep back downstairs really quickly before he’s seen me and I spend the next hour or so in the utility room ironing so I don’t have to come up with yet another excuse as to why I don’t want sex.’ 

Another friend with a daughter in my son’s class admits to cleaning her teeth for 15 minutes until she hears her husband snoring.