Australian entrepreneur, Dan Groch, launched an app called HeroBoyfriend today, promising to “Make your relationship less boring.” His inspiration for the app came from his own personal experience of using a dating app to find a girlfriend.
Having found love on an app, Groch figured he could also keep the romance alive with the help of one, reports News Limited. Tinder finds you a girlfriend; HeroBoyfriend keeps her happy. Sorted.
The app provides users with curated restaurant suggestions to suit their partner’s tastes, adds “fun” activities to their calendar and reminds them to buy flowers for their special someone. Here lies the age-old question: if your boyfriend needs to be prompted to buy you flowers – do they count?
The general consensus in the office is that women don’t really mind if their partner has to be reminded to buy them flowers. Because, flowers. But the idea of men needing to be prompted to leave work on time and pay attention to their partner seems like a cop out… At what point do women need to ask themselves: am I dating a person or an app?
HeroBoyfriend’s tagline is: “Stay on the front foot: rest easy knowing that the thinking is being done for you.” So now men don’t need to do the laundry, the emotional labour or the thinking in their relationship.
Much has been written about the division of labour in relationships over the years. A 2011 report by the NSW Health Department found that women do an average of 18 hours a week more household work than men. Women spend one-third of their time on housework, compared to one-fifth of men’s time.
And it’s not just the cooking and cleaning that women do the brunt of in relationships. Last year, the UNSW Business School published an article stating, “The burden of emotional labour falls disproportionately on women.” Anecdotally, women are the ones who do most of the supporting, counselling and caring in relationships.
Considering the amount of household and emotional work women do there really should be a HeroGirlfriend app; to remind them to take out the rubbish for the third time this week, prompt them to hang out their boyfriend’s load of washing that’s been sitting in the machine for two days and is starting to smell and to suggest picking up a carton of their significant other’s favourite beer on the way home from work. Handy.
