Commentary: Don’t blame women for low libido. Sexual sparks fly when partners do their share of chores

Adding to this complexity is the fluctuating nature of female desire that changes in response to life experiences and the quality of relationships.

Relationships are especially important to female desire: Relationship dissatisfaction is a top risk factor for low desire in women, even more than the physiological impacts of age and menopause. Clearly, relationship factors are critical to understanding female sexual desire.

As a way of addressing the complexity of female desire, a recent theory proposed two different types of desire: Dyadic desire is the sexual desire one feels for another, whereas solo desire is about individual feelings.

Not surprisingly, dyadic desire is intertwined with the dynamics of the relationship, while solo desire is more amorphous and involves feeling good about yourself as a sexual being (feeling sexy), without needing validation from another.

Our research acknowledged the nuances of women’s desire and its strong connection to relationship quality by exploring how fairness in relationships might affect desire.

The research involved asking 299 Australian women aged 18 to 39 questions about desire and relationships. These questions included assessments of housework, mental load – such as who organised social activities and made financial arrangements – and who had more leisure time.

We compared three groups: Relationships where women perceived the work as equally shared equal (the “equal work” group); when the woman felt she did more work (the “women’s work” group); and when women thought that their partner contributed more (the “partner’s work” group). We then explored how these differences in relationship equity impacted female sexual desire.