For example, when I’m at work I don’t feel like it, or if I do I can hold it back without any problem, but when I get home the urge seems to be uncontrollable and impossible to hold back.
Cuz you know there’s a bathroom there and it’s a safe one.
Familiarity breed continence.
Latchkey Incontinence
https://www.incontinence.co.uk/are-you-silently-suffering-from-latchkey-incontinence
Certainly the “uncontrollable” part seems to match, at least.
Also colloquially known as “ass radar”
I remember there was actually a scientific article written about this. If I recall, it’s something about your brain/subconscious knowing that you are close to a toilet
It’s not just about being close to any toilet though, specifically the one at home is different. Coming home from a trip and I’ll need to go to the bathroom even though I’ve had plenty of good access the whole time.
It probably has something to do with the guarantee of access mixed with the urgency and relaxed retention that comes with being in a comfortable environment. It’s unlikely to be any one thing, but, instead, a combination of factors.
Can we use that ability to track down hidden facilities that contain a toilet (say, in the desert)?
Unfortunately this method only works if you already know where the toilet is.
Men who stare at toilets
I’ve observed this multiple times with number 1.
As to anyone, it has happened to me many times over the course of my life, that after having to hold it for too long, the last minutes, seconds, end up a total rush against the time. There’s always this dramatic arc of making it just for the last second.
But I asked myself: if the urgency was merely function of the continuous kidney/bladder function then statistically, why would I almost always make it just by the lastest milisecond, and I would certainly lose the battle if my bathroom was 2 cm further. Clearly this is risky, esp. considering that sometimes things happen like the bathroom happens to be occupied or you can’t find your key or your zipper is stuck or something dumb, robbing you of that critical few seconds.
I’ve learned that to save myself from the unnecessary drama and rush, I can actually sort of convince myself that there is extra, say 10m between me and my bathroom. Just try to “lie” to my body a bit, about how far the right place is, or make up some vague extra steps as necessary to enable truly safe disposal. And it almost always gives me an extra few minutes.
It’s certainly one of those things when the signaling around the body is much more strategic than we would think.
Probably as simple as muscle memory.
The Joann Fabric and Crafts near me stopped offering a restroom to customers during Covid and never went back (understandable). But knowing that I can’t go while I’m there has created a situation where nothing makes me need to take a shit more urgently than browsing fabric and craft supplies. Luckily there is a Target next door.
I just pretent that home is actually still hours away and this is just a short stop somewhere. Usually works…
You go when (1) biologically needed, and (2) it is convenient.
Stress hormones suppress the desire at work but at home you feel relaxed 😎.
Trouble is I’m stressed when I’m rushing home because there’s trouble brewing in my colon.
But in that case, wouldn’t you be as equally stressed if that happened while at work?
You’re going an awful lot of assuming thinking I’m not stressed at home…
So do you have the opposite happen to you, where the urge increases as you get closer to work? :-P
Edit: pulls out marker, well looks like I need to make another edit here then, from home to work…
I suddenly want to make a line of parodies of these signs. Like have one that says in a really quirky font “Defecate” for the bathroom.
Do it!
Some already exist though, if you want additional inspiration:
I’m thinking specifically targeting the “Live Laugh Love” Rae Dunn kind of aesthetic.
Weird tangent: I was asked to design and build a dining room cupboard for my parents’ house. So I went out to the internet to look at examples to come up with design elements I liked, and I noticed something: I couldn’t find any evidence that anyone actually uses dining room cabinets for anything. It’s supposed to be a buffet or server with dish storage above, but they’re only ever used as trophy cases to consumerism. Set dressing to make the Tiktok studio look like a home. And I really want to graffiti a cock and balls on the very concept itself.
Do something like this but hang the cute little ceramic pig on a cute little steel meathook, write “BABY FACTORY” and “SPERM DONOR” on the mugs, make the signs say things like “Purchase” and “Keep Up Appearances” and “Like Share Subscribe Follow”, use fake dead plants, stuff like that.
It’s the closest thing to art I’ve had the desire to do.
I think back when people had less space and fewer things, they would hold the good fancy items for special events. Whereas now everyone has far more than they need… except ironically health insurance, a stable job, oh yeah a place to live, food, etc.
Everyone everywhere stores their actual dishes in their built-in kitchen cabinets and have for longer than I’ve been alive.
Since the dawn of the 20th century, the dining room cupboard went through the following stages of evolution:
- That’s where we keep the dishes, and when we serve dinner we put the food there on the cabinet’s countertop so you can get your plate and serve yourself right there nice and convenient.
- That’s the case where we keep mom’s good china, we use those for special occasions like Thanksgiving and Christmas and when the pastor comes over for dinner, the normal dishes we got from Sears are in the kitchen.
- Those dishes were ordered from a catalog in the 1950’s for your grandmother and are therefore more sacred than the lining of God’s ballsack. Even thinking of eating off of them is a heresy.
- Millennials are killing the fine china industry
- 10 unbelievable tips for reducing generational clutter, number 7 will shock you.
- I bought this mass produced coffee mug available at national retail chains for $14 from a scalper on eBay for $290. It says JOY written in Skellington Sans.
Live, Laugh, Poop
Ingest, Digest, Excrete
Or how about one that just says “CONSUME”
I’m thinking that one would go in the dining room.
It’s true because I have a bidet.
Tell your work to put in a bidet? Yeah, that’ll happen /s :-D.
Jealous
Because you subconsciously recognise that you have entered your territory, therefore you must mark it.
Edit : I have no idea, this is a good question btw.
This isn’t too hard to explain based on everything I know about human behaviour. Your brain has probably just carved a very big pathway in it for all the times you’ve pooped in your own home. You can associate anything that rewards your body with endorphins with anything else that provides a strong memory or reaction. See pavlov
presumably you instinctively know that you’re in a wholly safe place and there is no excuse not to do it anymore. We’re really not made to suppress elimination for a long time like that, in nature the only reason not to get the business done is because you gotta walk away from camp or because you’re chased by a lion, and neither of those tend to take a long time…
we should really be glad we’re at all able to hold it in as long as we do
Availability. You’re more likely to go potty when there’s a toilet, you’re more likely to eat when there’s food, etc.
Butthole detects proximity to safe toilet.
i call this my bgps in the car so my kids have no idea what im talking about.
“Honey the bgps is engaged, buckle up”
