'Equal' marriages leave men sexually deprived?

All is fine in an 'equal marriage' where you cook, clean the house or do the laundry to help your spouse finish her official assignment but has this left you sexually deprived?

According to a study, there is a connection between the types of chores the men do and the frequency of sex.

"When men did more masculine types of chores, things like taking out the trash or fixing the car as opposed to doing only feminine chores, those couples had sex more frequently than the couples in which the men did the more feminine chores," psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb was quoted as saying.

If you share the chores with your spouse, the two of you have a 'peer marriage', an egalitarian partnership.

But according to Gottlieb, "it turns out that the women reported higher sexual satisfaction in traditional couples as well".

Gottlieb's recent article titled 'Does a More Equal Marriage Mean Less Sex?' in The New York Times has sparked a debate over 'traditional' and 'equal' marriage and why 'peer' marriages appear to have lost that sexual spark.

For this, she looked at a study where couples in both traditional marriages and egalitarian marriages were surveyed about their sex lives.

When the men did no chores, they were also having the least sex, said Gottlieb, author of the bestseller "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough".

"The best way for couples to overcome this is for them to determine what they are getting out of their marriage, and to appreciate their spouse for what they do," a report on WRVO public media website quoted Gottlieb as saying.

According to Gottlieb, "People's lives are so blurred because of the 'sameness', because of everything that they are doing together, that they do not really have a separate spear for this aspect of their lives."

Sameness is referring to a couple who has a lot in common, as opposed to a couple who has an "opposites attract" dynamic.

It is important for couples with 'sameness' to communicate about sex and make the time to separate that part of their marriage out, she noted.