AIBU to want to be a discreet pooper? (lighthearted)

[Lovemypeaceandquiet]

NC for this, but I couldn’t help myself to ask if I’m the only one.

I don’t like people to know when I’m popping.

As in, I don’t like to make it obvious - let’s say I can’t just get up and go for a longer toilet break and then come back to the room full of people knowing they know I’ve just been for a number 2.

So I time my toilet time for when no one is around.

For example I’ve got guests staying over this weekend, so I woke up before everyone else to use the downstairs toilet.

Alternatively, I wait for everyone to wake up and go downstairs, so I can use the upstairs bathroom before taking a shower, so the lengthy stay in there is justified by something else than taking a 💩

Even when it’s just me & my husband in the house, I choose the furthers bathroom away from him!

I know it’s a natural thing and everyone does number 2, but it makes me uncomfortable to think that someone knows exactly when I do it 😬

How can people never need to go outside their own home, not go for days at a time on holiday or never use a public toilet for anything?

Do you barely leave the house?

I'm similar, but I'm not bothered about my husband knowing.

I used to be like this then got a bowel disease and don’t have the luxury of waiting for an empty house. It also made me
realise how bloody ridiculous it is to try to control a perfectly natural and imperative body function that 100% of people on this planets have to perform to survive.

it reminds me of the woman who ended up in hospital for holding in her farts because she didn’t want her boyfriend to hear it.

let the shit freely flow!

@BarbaraofSeville I poop once a day and then I’m ready for the day!

Again, I can do it anywhere if needed but I need to make sure there’s no one near when I do 😂

@11stonesomething same, if I’m not mentally relaxed/comfortable, I can’t poop!

Why did you feel the need to start a thread about this? Bit concerned we have a poo troll here...

When did it stop being poo and pooing and start being poop and pooping?

No, I’m not a troll, I promise 😂

Ive started the thread to find out if there’s more people like me who are funny about it. You’re clearly not my target audience

Wow, no this doesn’t bother me. I don’t like public loos because of the hygiene issue and of course ideally I prefer privacy. But as a rule I don’t really give any head space to the possibility that someone else might somehow guess when I’m going, or care about it.

It sounds unhealthy tbh. Stories of people storing up a week’s worth of excrement in their bodies because they’re unable to poo on holiday — that’s horrible actually.

God I forgot about the poo troll. Dammit!

Nope, never had this problem. I don't particularly like it in public loos when I can hear the person next to me doing a poo. And if they do a fart then I can't stop giggling! However, apart from that I'm fine.

As in, I don’t like to make it obvious - let’s say I can’t just get up and go for a longer toilet break and then come back to the room full of people knowing they know I’ve just been for a number 2.

How do they know you’ve been pooing all that time? You might have stopped to talk to someone on the way back from the loo.

I'm the same as you OP (I was worse if anything, I'd give myself awful stomach issues over it) but have relaxed in recent years partly due to a very relaxed and understanding partner.

I'm still not keen on going in a public toilet or at work but at home I'm much better. I wouldn't announce it, but I will just go when I need to go now.

I'm the exact same OP. I need total privacy and it's not even a case of holding it in, it's like my body just seizes up and I don't even get the urge to go, just feel increasingly bloated. Even when I try to go sometimes it won't happen. The location of the toilet in a hotel room can be a deciding factor in booking a holiday. I despair at the design choice of putting nothing but glass between the bathroom and room.

I'm the same, think I always have been. It really stresses me out though but I can't get over it! Going away with in laws for 3 nights this summer and I've already worried about it 🙈 definitely got worse since having kids as I got so constipated during and after pregnancy and so my worrying about it makes it all worse! Awful

It comes from making each other feel bad about it from a young age. I don't get why we do it to ourselves, same with periods and changing a pad. The lengths I've gone to to make a pad wrapper be quiet is stupid. Doesn't bother me as much now but I can always remember girls in school howling with laughter and mean comments if they knew someone needed/had a poo, it was horrible. We all have to poo so why can't we just all be neutral about it, like being hungry or tired.

And me! I know many other women with the same issues but none of the men I know seem at all bothered.

Yes, it does seem to be a particularly female thing - women socialised to put other people first all the time, to the extent that they actually feel guilty doing a normal natural thing that everybody does in case people will notice and think/judge them as 'unladylike'. Women have to conduct themselves like battery hens as they feel they don't have the right to take more than a square foot just for themselves, in case they prevent somebody else who fancies another acre or two.

I know you put 'lighthearted', but it does sound like this is impacting negatively on your life.

My husband is the total opposite of me, he’s a shameless popper, doesn’t care one bit who might know he’s just gone for a 💩

This is a problem too. If he took all his clothes off in public, started grunting and then curling one out in the aisle of the aeroplane/supermarket/on his office desk, then it would indeed be fair to describe him as a 'shameless pooper'; but where did you ever get the idea from that going to a private purpose-designed facility in order to fulfil an obligatory private human function is 'shameless'?

If anybody is looking at you with childish disgust or amusement that you've gone to a toilet to do a normal, compulsory, universal toilet-based activity, it really is them with the problem and not you.

You might as well deliberately never have children purely on the grounds that immature people will see you with them and start smirking or judging you because they know you've had sex.

I know this is weird, but I’m actually quite jealous of this 😂 I always need to go at the most random times and because I can never predict it, it makes me really anxious worrying about needing to go when I’m out and about. I suppose actually we are quite similar in that sense because I do actually hate going ‘in public’ so to speak.

I am similar to you. I don’t like it to be obvious with people I know but I have no issues with using public toilets etc. Luckily I am very quick in the bathroom when going #2, it doesn’t take me much longer than a wee so I can often get away with going and nobody suspecting it was anything more than a wee! That’s fine when the toilet is at the other side of the house etc but I do struggle when it’s in the next room and someone might hear me.

I can always remember girls in school howling with laughter and mean comments if they knew someone needed/had a poo

People like that are to be pitied, really, if not mocked (assuming no learning difficulties or similar).

They remind me of the old Harry Enfield character Brian Bewildered who failed to comprehend the most simple concepts - like seeing a line of people on the opposite pavement, a bus pulling up and then the line of people having disappeared as the bus leaves, assuming it must have been an alien abduction or something; or a woman he knows who got unexplainably 'fatter and fatter' and then, suddenly, a 'small person popped out of her on a string'.

I live alone but when I have a friend staying I'll wait until they've just been to the loo before having my poo. I don't mind them knowing, but I don't want them to walk into the miasma!

This is a problem too. If he took all his clothes off in public, started grunting and then curling one out in the aisle of the aeroplane/supermarket/on his office desk, then it would indeed be fair to describe him as a 'shameless pooper'; but where did you ever get the idea from that going to a private purpose-designed facility in order to fulfil an obligatory private human function is 'shameless'?

Absolutely agree @WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll and your wording made me

I actually do remember a thread where posters talked about being embarrassed to tell their families or friends they were pregnant because in their minds it was like saying ‘we’ve had sex’.

I always make sure there is sufficient paper down first to minimise splash and therefore noise. DH has no such worries, do men worry about it at all? I doubt it. He produces much noise, splash, and smell, and is usually quite proud about it.

I always make sure there is sufficient paper down first to minimise splash and therefore noise. DH has no such worries, do men worry about it at all? I doubt it. He produces much noise, splash, and smell, and is usually quite proud about it.

There's no necessity for actual pride in it, but it's definitely one of those things in life where women judge other women just for being normal - holding each other up to ridiculous unobtainable standards such as trying to pretend not to need to poo.

It takes a very special kind of internalised misogyny to feel the need to judge other humans for being human - but only half of them, mind.

It's just as absurd to hear a woman in a toilet cubicle making a splashing sound and a bit of a pong and angrily/critically seething "She is having a poo!" as it would be to see that same woman in a cafe and point accusatorily at her, hissing "She is having a sandwich!"

The vast majority of men truly do not care about this - and if a boyfriend/partner does start trying to humiliate you for being a normal human, he's done you a massive favour by hanging out a mile of red bunting to alert you to his deep-seated misogyny, so that you can know to run without looking back and find another man instead who actually likes and values women.