I recently saw a video on YouTube that had me laughing, then giggling for hours afterwards. You guessed it, it's all about knowing when it's OK to fart in front of your partner. Feel free to watch it here:
When I took a breath from giggling like an 8 year old, I got thinking about how often we go out of our way to hide our farts from our dates or our partners. How many stomach aches and “I need to get home now” fibs we tell to cover up the fact we actually just need to, as a friend of mine says, “go outside and dust the crops”.
So I’ve decided to go there. Yes, this blog is about farting in relationships (haha, I just giggled again).
Ahem.
So when do we break the barrier?
When is it completely okay to fart in front of the person you are dating?
It can cause massive embarrassment when you’re first starting to get to know someone and one of the following happens:
- You fart when you use their bathroom which is unfortunately really, really quiet and very, very close to the other room where he or she is sitting.
- You’re walking down the street with them, perhaps even holding hands, and you decide to just let a quick, hopefully silent one go, and well, it’s NOT.
- You let one go while they are in the other room hoping it will go away by the time they return but, oh no, they’re back and your fart is still around
I think we can call this “accidentally breaking the barrier”. This accident can actually aid when the future barrier is broken, formally.
Everyone’s body and digestive systems are different so I don’t want to get into how to prevent gas (although there are some wonderful contributors in this magazine that can speak to that), but if you find yourself on a date and you’re feeling gassy, you have some options:
- Spend a little extra time in the public bathroom and do some yoga moves in the stall. This is entirely possible – just check out YouTube for ‘wind removing poses’ and do them standing up. Just bending over and touching your toes for 30 seconds works too.
- If possible, ‘go and get something from your car’ if you’re at their place.
- If you’re really stuck, a friend of mine said: “I went into my bathroom, folded up a towel, put it on the edge of the tub and farted into it.” Sounds like it lessens the acoustics.
When it comes to ‘breaking the barrier’ in your more developed relationship, you could take the approach found in the YouTube link I shared, OR, you could just seriously laugh about it all. Give each other a bit of slack, create some mini-rules like ‘anything you do while you sleep doesn’t count’ and ‘you won’t let it rip when it’s inappropriate’ (like at the dinner table or during a serious/emotional conversation). Communicate about it – and create some humor around it. By all means, don’t put yourself through stomach torture and be one of those couples that is together for 10 years and has never farted in front of each other. Yes, I do know a couple that claims this but can you imagine how many unnecessary points of stress they endured because of it?
Farts seriously are funny. In fact a friend of mine once said to me, “farts and monkeys: whatever age you are, they will always be funny”.
To your authenticity,
Love, Christine