One of my favourite things is to watch other couples have a row. I don’t mean drunken fights on the street – although those are fun, too – I mean those tense bickering set-tos that only married couples have. Hearing about one second-hand will do.
While we were on holiday our friends Henry and Jemima occasionally had a little spat and it was the most tremendous fun to watch it play out as usually Giles and I are the ones taking chunks out of each other.
“Wait!” I shrieked, whenever I saw a bit of a moment coming up, “let me get a fresh cup of coffee.” I sat at the table with my chin on my knuckles and occasionally refereed. (“Actually, Jemima, you did say that.”
It just makes me feel so much more normal as Giles and I go through phases where we are absolutely at each other’s throats. On a long weekend in Scotland we were about to have such a terrible row that I had to get up and leave Giles on his own in the kitchen with our hosts.
One of the best martial ding-dongs I ever heard about was to do with a Squatty Potty. A Squatty Potty, if you don’t know, is a plastic device that is made to fit around the stem of your loo, on which you rest your feet in order to raise you into a squatting position, which is impossible to achieve easily on a Western loo.
This, believers maintain, is a better position in which to perform a vital function. Just sitting, as if at a desk, scrunches up the colon, encourages straining, which leads to unpleasant side-effects.
Anyway so my friend bought this thing, with her own money, and installed it happily and proudly in the family bathroom. And her husband went nuts when he saw it! He was really pissed off.
It was something to do with his aversion to her slightly woo-woo health theories anyway plus just generally a very straight-laced approach to life and seemingly being the only man in the entire world who isn’t totally obsessed with crapping, his own crap, when he craps, how many times a day, how it went, how he was feeling before, how he’s feeling now, how much he weighed before, how much he weighed now, what he was reading…
My friend’s husband was furious that the purchase of this thing was not discussed. He was furious at the monstrous alt-health item bunging up his bathroom.
It was a most entertaining WhatsApp conversation I had with my friend at the time and I laughed heartily and sympathised. But I also came away newly informed about this squatting theory and, I have to say, I was quite converted. I make do with an Ikea thing, but I am pretty tempted to get my own Squatty Potty. I will, of course, inform my husband first.
what ikea thing?
also i hope the squatty potty model on amazon was paid A LOT of money
Oh please get one 🤣
I think it’s a husband thing…
We’ve got one and I love it, my husband less so, I think it’s because it makes him go too fast and therefore his bathroom ‘time’ is cut short.
There’s a fab advert for it, have a look on You Tube 💩
We have the exact same situation! I’m a big fan, my husband less so, because it’s “too efficient”.
It does make it look like a playgroup bathroom permanently so I get it. It looks like something my mum would order from Kleeneze and set my dad in a permanent eye roll. I like hearing other people bicker, too, it’s so reassuring. My husband and I get along so well generally, but it’s like a game of table tennis that mostly goes on like friendly rally, but sometimes turns into us running the length of the table smacking balls at each other’s faces. Ping pong balls you understand. We are having to redo an entire city break because we seethed so much through the last one we didn’t end up doing any of the things either of us wanted to. It was an accumulation of things but really began over a sandwich. We seem to have a row on the last day of any holiday – having got through all kinds of travelling stress, dealing with children in inconvenient locations, putting up tents etc in harmony a few days earlier, it’s always on the way home, like toddlers acting out because we don’t want to leave the playground. The fun thing is we never see it coming, though some of our most beloved in-jokes come from things we’ve said in previous arguments so all part of the rich tapestry of mawwidge. Until it becomes part of the rich tapestry of divorce, I suppose. I always think of Jess and Marie and the wagon wheel coffee table.
Ah yes, the wagon wheel coffee table, so perfect.
My (older-teen) children are skilled at a heated bicker, once lengthily and animatedly over what constitutes the landing and at what point does it become the corridor at the top of our stairs.
Unfortunately my husband has a bad memory so he’s easily defeated. No fun.
Oh I’m dreading what mine will be capable of as teens. I once told one not to pull leaves from a bush and he immediately said “it’s a hedge” and grrr if he wasn’t technically right.
Also quite keen on the squatty potty; the adverts are AMAZINGLY odd/funny/awful and worth seeking out for themselves.
Ugh, blazing rows. Always started by me, often when premenstrual, usually after a drink. I hate the rows but I hate being so predictable too.
The advert have a Horrible Histories/Ghosts feel to them; having watched it I’m now convinced the whole thing was conceived in order to make the stool/stool joke at the end, which, fine in my book. And ugh, yes the predictability!
Is it silly season?? Nope not interested in the slightest in owning a squatty anything.
no it isn’t silly season and if you’re not interested why bother leaving a comment
You can get the same effect with a small folding stool. I bought a PopStep on Amazon and it just folds right up and sits unobtrusively behind the loo area when not in use.
this is a very good compromise for those living with people who are averse to alt-health stuff, like Jane
We have a portable bathroom step that does the trick!
thanks for the tip.
im thinking that since men are generally taller, they are in a more squatty position to start with (on a toilet)
Right – that’s my husband’s Christmas present sorted.
LOL! Your husband sounds like mine babe
We have one of those stools kids stand on to brush their teeth and I use it like this ever since I was preg with youngest and a midwife told me it would help my SPD.
It fucking works.
100%, GF
I’ve never heard of these ….
It’s so nice and normal to have a fight and I love hearing about people fighting. I have one friend who whenever I told her I’ve had a fight with my husband would text back “again??? 🙁🙁”. Like it was some terrible portent of imminent divorce. I’ve stopped telling her now.
Anyway, I’m quite obsessed with pooing and might get one of the folding stools. 👍🏼
omg next time text me and I will tell you about a worse one I had with mine
Our marriage is just a series of rows and truces.
I was in a very cute, artisanal trattoria in Venice last December – the kind of place that serves horrid cloudy organic Prosecco in Prosecco land- and in the loo there was a poster for a fancy version of a squatting potty. The poster had instructions, benefits and diagrams :-/
I thought the juxtaposition of the stylish trattoria and the poster was odd. But the fact that the loo pretty much opened on to the tiny dining room, and people might have been taking the poster’s advice- that was just alarming.
I’m clearly the outlier here, because not only is my partner relaxed about the squatty potty, she bought me one for my birthday. (There were other presents too. Honest.)
I really liked it, but it is massive and when we got a new sink and storage unit put in, it just didn’t fit any more, so it languishes in the cellar. Now I use one of those steps from Ikea.
We fight (though we both hate it), but not about this, clearly.
I’m so gullible…. mine arrived last night. Have yet to unpack. No husband to whom I have to explain just sceptical teenager & millenials. On the subject of rows I always backed down cos hate confrontation -unless I’m driving (!) and now no more husband -he’s become someone else’s never apologising problem. Yay. Thank you Esther as ever for brightening my day and always making me laugh whether it’s insta or on the podcast. X
Our entire marriage is one row blending seamlessly into the next. We never get anything resolved. Just move from one disagreement into another, holding firm to resentment and using it to fuel passive aggressive digs at any given opportunity. This niggly bitchy status quo blows apart once every 3/4 months when we have a fight that would be used as a stereotypical example of ‘acts that most traumatise your children in the family home’ then we go back to snippy again.
Huh. This potty is bringing about quite a lot of marital exploration 😬
That all sounds very familiar Isobel