to ask dh to stop on his way home from work to pick up some sanitary towels?

[TheRhubarb]

I've run out and my period has just started. I normally have a good supply but the car has broken down so for the past 2 weeks I've been without a car. That should have been resolved this weekend but the old banger he went to buy to replace ours, also broke down. No car means online shopping and when I do online shopping I often forget these necessities because I'm not confronted with an aisle full of them to remind me.

Nearest shop is the village PO which will be full of the horsey set after school and probably won't stock any decent pads (I need nighttime ones as well as ordinary winged ones). So unless dh gets some on the way back I'm stuffed. However he HATES me asking him to do this (yes I have asked before) and I realise he finds it really embarrassing, but I don't know what else to do?

h has bought them for me once and by the look on his face you would think I had asked him to eat a dog shit sandwich.

He hates the P word, wont discuss it and prefers to pretend they dont exist which imo is absolutely pathetic and I make sure he knows this. 50% of the worlds population have them for 40 ish years, its not like its a big fucking secret!

So I now occasionally go out of my way to mention my gut rot.....because of the GREAT BIG CLOTS I am losing :o

Thank you Yellow and LRD.

The comparison with shaving products isn't very fair. Periods are completely different and to do with the repulsion of womb lining from a woman's vagina resulting in the loss of blood and clots. How is that related to shaving?

I remember being embarrassed as a young girl buying sanitary towels. I would avoid male cashiers and if there were no female cashiers then I wouldn't buy them. That is because I was brought up to think that periods were disgusting and dirty and a secret to be hidden.

I have had to get used to it because I need them every month and thankfully I questioned these attitudes and came out the other end. Dh's upbringing was similar and because he hasn't had to buy sanitary products every month he's quite unsure about it all. Telling him to just grow up would only make him feel humiliated.

Anyway, I did ask and he did agree. I must admit I thought most men were like that as I've not had to ask many, hence the thought of starting a thread to test the waters.

Loving all these clueless husbands who got it wrong!

Well he's getting them now and doing the big shop to boot, He didn't seem to make a big deal of it. Crisis averted!

My DDad is just like your DH, It doesn't make him a bad person like your DH it's just the way he was brought up. If he had flat out refused and said "Eww" It would be a different story. :)

Even my sons wouldn't baulk at this. I really can't believe a grown man would have a problem. OP how the hell did you get pregnant?

i dont ask my dh unless im desperate! nothing to do with him being embarrassed or anything, he just always brings home the wrong thing! even when i am very specific! the last time he came home with things that were not far from nappies!!! i think he does it so i dont ask

Exactly. And it's not like he's using the way he was brought up as an excuse not to get them. He's got a different attitude to his parents but yes, he needs a little more practice, particularly when it comes to selecting underwear.

Thanks for that lisaro. Little did I know that starting this thread would lead to so many sneering comments.

I think I'll leave it there now. Thanks for the replies.

Actually, I disagree that shaving is different.

I think the magnitude of that difference is down to our society and the way it is very sexist. It would be quite possible to imagine a society where the whole idea of shaving your face was considered revolting and private - just as periods are (really nastily) often considered in our society.

No one I know is ever embarrassed buying loo roll, or plasters, or even nappies .. it is really interesting and worrying how periods have been promoted as so very different.

This is the problem, isn't it? That all sorts of natural things are made out to be dirty or strange, but actually they are quite normal and, in our modern world, very easy to deal with cleanly.

withacherryontop i was just about to cos im in a daft mood but now i wont lol

op yanbu if hes grown up enough to put his cock in it then hes grown up enough to not act like a 10 yo around any feminine products but make sure he can be trusted not to stick them to his head like great big ears and jumb around yelling wobble

I didn't put that very well.

I mean, I don't think shaving and its paraphernalia is inherently so very different, but that it is culturally understood as different, and the differences are exaggerated.

Yes I do understand LRD and I do agree with you, periods shouldn't be seen as 'different'. I am guilty of doing that myself.

socknickingpixie - was there any need for that? Does it make you feel better to put others down and mock them?

Aww bless, YANBU to ask him, but I can understand him being embarassed.

My DH would too. He would do it for me, but I know he would be flustered and probably grab the first he found, and find it quite traumatic.

It's just something outwith what they normally deal with. Women buy razors too yknow, so it is a bit different.

If you were posting" my dh won't buy me sanitary towels and I can't leave the house" or "DH won't let me have money to buy tampons" you have a problem. But a man who gets a bit embarassed at girl products? Perfectly normal.

I've found when I need things beyond his usual realm (was foundation last time !) it's good to give him the empty packet and he can ask a sympathetic looking shop assistand for help.

And all you lot saying your DHs would march into the shop whistling and march out swinging a packet of always over this head - I don't believe you! I very rarely see men buying them in the supermarket, and the ones I do see cant wait to whizz them past the self scanners.

I just asked dh, the only bit he questioned was if he was already going past a supermarket, otherwise its just annoying.
Dh wouldn't blink twice at buying this stuff for me, as long as I was specific and preferably showed him packaging so he knew what he was looking for. Im not saying he would show them off to all concerned, actually he would double bag and buy extras to hide the shape, but he wouldn't be phased by being asked.
However a few years ago his sister asked him to buy him some pads and he flat out refused, said it was icky, embarrassing and flat out refused! (To be fair she was just being lazy)

Is your querying of shaving not being similar relating to my post?

I used that because it is a product area that is typically one gender only (I can deal with female hair removal, but the products are gender-delineated so I have no cause to deal with the men's ones) so I have no reason in day to day life to understand them. So if DH asks me to get them for him then I can feel a bit flustered and uncertain - out of my comfort zone - and worry that I'll get the wrong thing, so need explicit instructions. (And I would feel the same if somebody asked me to pick a posh wine for dinner too! I'm not a sap, but I hate not knowing things and get flustered if I don't and have to deal with it anyway!) But I would never say no. In the same way DH would buy sanitary products for me without knowing the first thing about them but might be uncomfortable just because he doens't know what all the products do :o. So in that sense they are similar - of course there is less acceptance of menstruation than there is male body hair, but I was trying to point out that maybe your DH's embarrassment was due to him not knowing anything about the products and not wanting to get it wrong rather than being embarrassed about the fact that you have periods per se which everyone seemed to assume (and lots of people seemed to assume he'd refused to, which he hadn't and didn't).

Anyway, this all seems a bit of a non-thread in a way because you asked whether everyone's DHs bought them or not in case your DH refused but he didn't refuse so you're all sorted and it's a non-issue. And he's getting the shopping too so it's all good :)

Still wondering why you think the air-kissing horsey crowd would care what you are in the shop buying. If they're that awful, they'll be too wrapped up in themselves to care that somebody is buying sanitary towels...

"but the products are gender-delineated so I have no cause to deal with the men's ones"

do people really only buy razors according to colour gender? I always go for the cheapest, don't really care whether it's pink womens or black mens

I actually threw a pack of sanitary towels at DH the other day, I asked for tampax and he got towels. I was a bit hormonal. He probably shouldn't have suggested that I just roll one up and shove it up!

I buy the cheapest too Tyler but my son buys those super dooper gillete something or others and if he asked me to get him some new blades I wouldnt have a clue what to get!

And ffs OP dont be so bloody sensitive! It is perfectly ridiculous that a grown man is embarrassed by a natural process that half the population have to deal with, as I have said to my H.

Gawd, I text my dh all the time to buy tampons. Doesn't bat an eyelid.

i have 2 sisters and a wife, i'm kind of cool about buying tampons, well not really 'cool' , more 'used to it' but still consceious that i'm not buying weetabix. and i do wonder what the checkout girl thinks, "has a wife" or "depraived perv with a tampon fetish!!!!"

i'm sure you all think i should grow up, but . there was a time i couldnt buy toilet paper without going crimson so things are inproving.

I have asked DH, and he has picked them up for me with no problem, or complaints.

:) at Convert

Chairman I used to work in Superdrug where all manner of "embarrassing" products went past me and I can tell you that the checkout operator will be thinking "FFS, its only 10 am, 6 more hours of this shit to go......wonder what to have for tea....That'll be £1.79 please sir........I cant wait for my holiday....might look at bikinis at the weekend.....". A man buying tampons wouldnt even cause a flicker!

tyler - yep, I only shave with pink razors, just like i only drink from a pink cup and only wear pink from head to toe, and changed my name by deed poll to Cerise. In fact I'm a bit pissed off that tampons are white and not pink given only us girlz have need for them so they don't need to make them gender-neutral to appease men, who don't seem to want to buy them for us anyway...

It's either that, or the cheap ones tore my legs to shreds and I found a razor that worked in the women's section so have no cause to ever look in the men's section :)

How did I manage to make a thread about tampons into a rant about shaving? I sometimes wonder about my sanity :o Sorry OP and everyone else!

bogeyface, I totally disagree that checkout people aren't thinking about what you're buying. I used to work in a chemist and yes, a lot of the other people working there would say afterwards "bloody hell, did you clock that guy buying tampons?" or whatever. Maybe it's because it was a small and backwards town, but it did happen.

I hope he finds the right thing. My dh accepted a useless substitution for my tampax in the Tesco order when I was out. So am now left with some san-pro I'll never use. But at least he put the rest of the Tesco order away, you can't have it all!

get him to buy u some chocolate whilst hes getting the pads... Jeez all this over pads!!

Now imagine if he had to get the morning after pill!!!