Confessions of a Tidy Man

The other day I caught my girlfriend on the phone to a friend, complaining about my piles. Before you jump to any unfortunate conclusions, this had nothing to do with hemorrhoids. She was referring to my habit of arranging magazines, CDs and pretty much anything else around the flat in tidy little towers, all perfectly aligned.

'It's like living with a fussy old spinster,' she sighed. 'If I move anything from its exact 90° angle he has a fit. I'm convinced he's in the early stages of an obsessive-compulsive disorder.' Their conversation then turned to Sleeping With The Enemy, the Julia Roberts film with the sadistic husband who goes psycho because she hasn't lined up the hand towels. I never actually get angry about my girlfriend's shoddy domestic habits (which I first discovered when she moved in with me a few months ago) but I do occasionally feel mildly irritated by worryingly minor crimes, such as the fact that she replaces the toilet roll anticlockwise rather than clockwise.
 
Clean Living

The sad fact is, being a house-proud male does your sex appeal no favors. Most women view tidy men as unsexy, emotionally repressed and a little bit sinister - sort of like potential serial killers.

Indeed, before my girlfriend moved in and messed the place up, whenever people came over for dinner they always remarked on the ordered state of my flat. 'Gosh, this place is so tidy,' they would smile. But what they meant was: 'You uptight freak. Let's eat up and get the hell out of here'.

I almost wanted to reassure them that just because I like my magazines at 90° angles doesn't mean I'm sexually dysfunctional. They wouldn't have believed me. It was easier to lie and say I had an overzealous cleaner.

The big question is, why do certain men end up getting obsessive about tidiness? First, let me just say that the notion that all men are messy and all women are clean is simply not true. Indeed, plenty of women I know are prone to sluttish behavior, such as leaving underwear on the floor.

True, adolescent boys' bedrooms tend to smell like the bottom of a rubbish bin but once a man gets his own 'space' he soon realizes that potential shag partners are fussy about issues such as clean sheets. And so the penny drops that the occasional once-over with a vacuum cleaner could considerably increase his chances of getting nooky.

The problem is, in typical male fashion we then take it too far. Over the years, the long-term bachelor gets used to his pad being in a state of permanent seduction readiness. This is because he's convinced he might unexpectedly hook up with someone while out buying milk and he can't risk her ardour being cooled by a bag of nicely marinating gym clothes. Thus, after a few years, he turns into an anal-retentive fusspot. Like me.

You're probably thinking all this is coming out because I'm not used to sharing my space with my girlfriend. Perhaps there's an element of truth in that. But what I'm really saying is that it's time the world wised up to the fact that tidiness isn't a female preserve. You'd better get used to the rise of the tidy man because more and more men are getting off their lazy bums and helping around the house. Although women still do the lion's share of domestic chores, recent surveys claim men are learning to pull their weight in this department.

How do you feel about this? Obviously you want your man to do his fair share but you probably don't want to watch him doing it. It could have serious repercussions for your sex life. Not even George Clooney would look sexy wearing an apron and brandishing a toilet brush. So I guess the choice is yours. Let your man slob around while you slave over housework or learn to accept the house-proud men of this world. And that means no more jokes about my piles, please.