Meghan Trainor and her husband sit on side-by-side toilets. Is this the ultimate sign of intimacy? An expert weighs in.
Double sinks may be a common and useful addition to a home bathroom, but what about dual toilets?
After Meghan Trainor's brother, Ryan Trainor, revealed on Nicole Byer’s podcast Why Won’t You Date Me? that the singer installed two toilets for her and her husband Daryl Sabara to use together, the “All About That Bass” songstress took to Twitter to “clear things up.”
“We pooped ONCE together and we laughed and said never again…but he will hang out with me if I’m [pooping] cuz WE SOULMATES,” she tweeted on Oct. 6. “And i legit miss him when I’m away from him. And we pee together obvi.”
To clear things up…we pooped ONCE together and we laughed and said never again…but he will hang out with me if I’m ??ing cuz WE SOULMATES. And i legit miss him when I’m away from him. And we pee together obvi
— Meghan Trainor (@Meghan_Trainor) October 6, 2021
It wasn’t all that “obvi” to Trainor’s followers, however. One tweeted, “I can’t poop with anyone in the bathroom with me. And I’ve been with my man since I was 20 and we have 4 kids! Nope!” Another added, “I’m married almost 33 years, and have 4 young adult kids. It’s better to have a little private time in ANY marriage! I have no desire to share bathroom time with my husband. We’re not in the ARMY together.”
Yet others defended Trainor — and didn’t see her going No. 2 in front of her spouse as that big of a deal.
“I'm the youngest of five brothers, and we grew up in a house with one bathroom,” one tweeted, “Pooping with an audience was just part of the drill.”
Another wrote, “Why are people freaking out about this lol y’all really refuse to poop in front of your long term partners?”
While there’s no way to declare if it’s “normal” for Trainor and Sabara to hang out while on the toilet, it’s clear that bathroom talk is a pretty loaded topic when it comes to couples.
According to relationship expert and author of Relatable: How to Connect with Anyone, Anywhere (Even if it Scares You) Rachel DeAlto, differences in comfort levels around bodily functions can cause relationships to adapt to one person’s preferences.
“The person who is the least comfortable, you usually end up adapting to how they feel. Everyone is raised differently, and usually our feelings around our bowels and bodily functions are family-origin based,” she explains to Yahoo Life. “You can’t recreate an entire childhood in a moment, just to acclimate to a partnership. A lot of times it’s having a conversation about that. There are many couples who are able to adapt. However, others will be like, ‘This is how I feel,’ and that’s okay, too.”
These questions typically come up, she says, when people start getting more comfortable with being in one another’s space.
“It usually happens when you start to cohabitate in some way, and that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re living together,” she notes. “It means you’re spending overnights, and considerable time together. It doesn’t necessarily need to be brought up until that happens.”
While many people may feel comfortable going to the bathroom in front of their significant other, DeAlto admits that it’s not exactly the most common thing she’s seen.
“It’s a very natural bodily function,” she says. “However, we don’t have public restrooms that are fishbowls and open door policy. We’re private for a reason. It has always been conditioned that it’s something that is a private experience. It’s more of the norm for someone to say ‘I need some privacy in there.’”
And just in case anyone was worried that not wanting to poop in front of your significant other meant something about their relationship, DeAlto assures: “You don’t have to go to the bathroom together to be intimate.”