Sex Files: Why can’t he cope with messy spontaneity?

I’ve been seeing my boyfriend for a year and we still only have sex at his place because he insists on freshly laundered, ironed sheets on a perfectly-made bed. We both have to shower first. Why can’t he cope with messy spontaneity and my untidy bedroom?

I can’t think of anything nicer than sex in freshly-laundered sheets, with a freshly-laundered man. And, hey, if he likes you enough, maybe you could get him to your place with a mop and bucket.

Individually, messiness and tidiness are no big deal, but problems arise when they try to share space. In her paper Testing Thresholds in the Integrative Theory of the Division of Domestic Labor Sarah Riforgiate at Arizona State University explored what happened when people with different tidiness thresholds lived together. She found cohabitees who were similarly messy or tidy got on fine, but couples who had opposing cleanliness thresholds fought all the time.

It’s a finding that flies in the face of the old “opposites attract” adage. After all, if talkers like listeners and scatterbrains like planners, why wouldn’t messy like tidy? The answer is that differences between sexual partners become bigger over time. When you get together you focus on how you both like eating out and having sex, but the more you get to know each other the less attention you pay to your similarities and the more you attend to your differences.

Instead of him being the guy who loves eating out, having sex, and keeping things tidy, you skip the stuff you share and define him solely by the characteristic that makes him different to you. If the difference in question is benign, such as being a compulsive antiques collector or football fan, it doesn’t matter so much. But when the difference requires one partner to work much harder than the other to minimise the impact of the other person’s quirks, it can cause feelings of resentment.

To manage the considerable gap between your domestic standards, compromise is key. So instead of resenting those pre-sex showers, turn them into an opportunity for foreplay. Lather each other up with shower gel and take turns rinsing each other down. It’s extra-nice if the person being rinsed keeps their eyes closed.

When you’ve been at work all day, taking a shower before sex is a great way to relax, but sexual hygiene has important health benefits too. We all carry gazillions of horrible bacteria on our hands, and they are easily transmitted during sex. Make sure that your hands are clean and nails short, and remember to pee after sex. This, as well as washing afterwards, will help to reduce the likelihood of yeast infections.

It is worth thinking about why you are so messy and your boyfriend is so neat. Messiness and tidiness are learnt behaviours that can offer valuable insights into more complex characteristics. A messy desk, for example, can be a sign of creativity, whereas a dirty home can indicate that a person is suffering from depression.

Similarly an overly tidy home can be an indication of anxiety or even obsessive-compulsive disorder. It can also be a response to trauma. Some people learn to use tidiness in childhood as a way of creating order in a chaotic family. When you understand more about where a behaviour comes from, it makes it easier to empathise — and it also makes it easier to compromise. If you understand that your boyfriend’s tidiness is an important coping mechanism for him, you will stop seeing it as a barrier to intimacy.

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