Help Me Hera: My husband won't stop burping and farting around me

He'd never do it in front of anyone else, so why does he think it's OK to inflict this grossness on the person he loves most?

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Dear Hera,

My husband is the person I admire most in the world. Except when he thinks it's OK to burp, fart, floss his teeth, pick the dead skin off his feet (and then drop it on the floor!) in front of me. He would never do that in front of anyone else. When I've asked him not to, he responds with "I couldn't hold it in" – to which I respond "Ever farted like that in a board meeting?" (Yep, he's a company director on multiple boards.) Or he gives me a hurt silence, like I'm just expecting far too much.

We're all human, just animals who think we are vaguely civilised, and I'm certainly not perfect. But I make a vague, and not difficult, effort to not impose my unattractive physical realities on him. It feels like the absolute minimum I could offer.

My question is: why do people think it is OK to inflict their grossness on people who they should be loving and respecting the most? Follow-up question: It gives me the ick – is it reasonable to decide you don't want that in your life and leave someone who persists in such behaviour?

Canary in the Fartmine

Dear Canary,

Thank you for your letter!

On one hand, marriage isn’t a board meeting; we’re all decaying sacks of sentient meat, and it’s important to be comfortable in front of your partner if you want your relationship to last. On the other hand, your husband sounds gross, and his obvious indifference to your growing repulsion doesn’t bode well for your relationship.

Ultimately, it’s a matter of compatibility and respect. There are lots of couples who enjoy their natural winds, and share mutual joie de vivre in pranking each other ass-wise. Others think nothing of taking a dump while their significant other is having a relaxing bath. Personally, I think this is extremely foul behaviour, but if you’re of the James Joyce persuasion and you love your wife’s nasty little farts, then honestly good for you.

There’s a lot to be said for not being too squeamish about natural bodily processes, and it’s good we’ve collectively moved on from a time where men are excluded from the delivery room out of a lingering sense of Victorian propriety. We all have disgusting bodies that produce hideous substances, and over the course of a long marriage people are going to come down with food poisoning, or get injured and need help wiping their ass. It’s romantic to know someone loves you enough not to be instantly repulsed when you’re leaking like a bag of extra chunky homestyle soup.

Accidents happen, and it’s delusional to expect to get through a long relationship without a little puking or farting. If you’re disgusted by your partner’s anatomical reality, then you have no business being in an adult relationship.

However, there’s an enormous difference between being there for someone in sickness and in health, and ignoring your partner’s repeated pleas to stop shucking your feet like a husk of dried corn, and leaving your blister casings all over the communal floor.

What is most unattractive is your husband’s attitude. If your significant other tells you something you are doing profoundly grosses them out (and their request isn’t completely delusional), you should ideally give a shit about their feelings and be willing to compromise, especially when the compromise is relatively easy to accomplish. That doesn’t mean walking around with a cork up your ass for the next 40 years. But he definitely doesn’t need to floss and pick his feet in front of you, and I’m sure he could rein in many of his other natural gases.

Being in a long relationship means seeing both the best and worst of someone. You can’t be too squeamish if you’re in for the long haul. But there’s also a lot to be said for intentionally preserving a little mystery and romance, and it’s hard to do that when someone is constantly flaunting their lower intestine in front of you, and then sulking when you beg for mercy. Your husband should have a vested interest in keeping the flame alive, especially if he wants you to feel any lasting romantic or sexual attraction towards him, and his refusal to acknowledge the validity of your complaint is crappy behaviour in a marriage.

I wonder if some of this is gendered – would he be genuinely unbothered if you were constantly picking your scabs or breaking wind in front of him? If not, perhaps you should eat a can of chilli beans and give him a taste of his own medicine. 

Does he fart more than medically necessary? If it’s really gratuitously bad, maybe he’s in denial about having some kind of lactose intolerance and should see a doctor.

Do you still have a happy and satisfying romantic/sex life? Perhaps if you framed your concerns as being directly linked to your sexual attraction towards him, you might get a little more traction.

If he genuinely doesn’t care about seeming attractive to you, that seems like a larger problem. Leaving someone for farting once in a while is crazy, but leaving someone who refuses to make any reasonable accommodations when your marriage is on the line is completely sane. If you don’t think you can bear another forty years of slowly marinating in your husband’s noxious farts, it’s time to have a come-to-Jesus conversation.