It’s easy to generalize and I’m the first to admit I do it a lot. But generalizing about interpersonal relationships is a tricky thing. I grew up with dysfunctional parents so by the age of 6 I was cooking and cleaning. By ten I was running the household. At fifteen my mother ran away from home (my father was living on the other side of the world) and I took it in my stride because I’d been doing everything for so long there was no real change.

Fast-forward to my first marriage. All the domestic chores, bar none, down to me. The children arrive and I’m the one who gets up in the night when they need someone, I’m the one who rises early to get them up and dressed and fed, I’m the one who feeds them dinner and plays with them and puts them to bed. Despite working crazy hours running a software startup.

As for sex, well, there wasn’t ever much because despite having far more time than practically anyone I’ve ever known, she just wasn’t that interested in it. On the occasions it happened it was vanilla and iron-clad routine stuff. No variations permitted. You could have timed the activities and found less than 5% variation year after year. This wasn’t anyone’s fault, exactly. It was just a total mismatch, a matrimonial mistake. Divorce was a relief for both of us.

So it’s easy to generalize but the question of what people (of either gender) want is actually not quite so easy to answer, and stereotypes aren’t applicable to everyone.