This is probably the closest I will get to "potty talk" that I will get on any of my blogs. I debated as to whether to post this on my official blog or my "hidden" blog that doesn't get posted to Facebook because of the possible controversy. But then you will find out that this is a little thing… or a big thing, depending on how you look at it.
First off, let me say that I didn't even know this was an issue… a point that is argued over, and likely has been since the invention of the modern toilet. Naively, I was probably into my marriage for several months or maybe even a year or more before I had even realized that there are couples out there that fight over whether the seat should be left up or down. Obviously we weren't one of those couples, because I leave the seat at whatever position I last used it and up until then I had never even given it much though. See, I, like most men do not see a toilet seat as a crisis. If the seat needs to be lifted, we lift the seat. If the seat needs to be lowered, we lower it. I can speak for many of us in that it is something we just don't think about. It's like when we are driving. If we need to stop the car, the foot automatically goes to the brakes. We don't sit there and deliberate about it. We don't argue as to which pedal needs to be pushed. We just stop the car. The same should be true for the toilet seat. It should never even be something that ever needs mentioning or thinking about outside the bathroom.
Now, I am just going to cut to the chase and boldly state that had the toilet seat positioning been an issue with any woman that I ever dated, it would have been a deal breaker. You might think that I would be overreacting to a "little" thing and you would be right… it is a little thing. That's why it would be a deal breaker and let me explain.
There are two, maybe three indicators of personality traits (none of them positive, in my opinion) as to why this would be a deal breaker for me, and it is because it says a lot about person that I would be committing my entire life to. This may be a combination of one or two, if not all three of these:
1) The prospective partner does not have the capability to adapt to a situation or solve simple problems by herself. I could imagine a lifelong and endless string of demands, requests and definitions of male roles: Calling me at work because the car has a flat tire and she doesn't know how to change it or want to call AAA. Refusing to take out the garbage or mow the lawn, because that's "man's work." Not wanting the responsibility of learning simple repairs because she might have to actually do some "dirty work." These are the relationships where the "honey-do" lists come from.
While this may or may not be an accurate indicator, this is what I had feared and I have actually known… even dated women who would take that stance. Needless to say, the dating didn't last any longer than the discovery of the self-imposed helplessness of the women in question. I have to think about the future. I was from a large family. I knew that raising a family would be far from easy and it takes extraordinary effort from both partners to make a family a success. For somebody to get hung up on a task so trivial as lifting or lowering the toilet seat - how is she going to manage a real crisis?
2) The prospective partner makes mountains out of molehills. We all have faults and we all fall short of our goals and intentions. Sometimes we screw up… big time. On the screw-up scale, if failing to lower the toilet seat even registers, I would really hate to see where some of my other faults and flaws would fit in. I would really hate to see how this woman would treat our children when they are trying to learn… and fail. I shudder to even think about it. With excessive concern about such trivial things as a toilet seat, I am sure that this woman would blow a head gasket when the child gets suspended from school… or experiments with drugs.
3) The prospective partner likes to find reasons to find fault, complain or reprimand people. Maybe it's a power trip or maybe the woman truly is fastidious. It's hard to say for every case. I know people with endless lists of pet peeves. How does a person live with a partner like that… every day? I know I can't and won't. That's why it would be a deal breaker. One of the women I was dating was embarrassed to be seen with me because (among many other things) the shirts I was wearing were a couple of years out of style. I loved my velour shirt, but apparently they had gone out of style while I had been out of the country serving a mission for our church for a year and a half. I had not been overly conscious of styles anyway. I loved my velour shirt! Apparently she did not. She even threatened to "stop seeing me" if I wore that shirt again. Now, I must explain that this was the first woman that I had become completely smitten with. She was THE one. I could not do anything to displease her, so I complied. She even paid money out of her own pocket to buy me a shirt that wasn't so embarrassing to her. I don't even know what ever happened to my beautiful velour shirt. After this woman dumped me (and I don't think it was anything to do with the shirt, but it was likely something as trivial), I had vowed to never let a woman dictate to me every whim as to what I was or wasn't going to do or to wear. It just wasn't going to happen. The relationship would end before it even began.
Fortunately, I met a wonderful woman. She is not perfect, but she also knows that I am not perfect either… and she doesn't react in any way whatsoever as to the position of the toilet seat. We have argued about silly things, but we never had an issue about whether the toilet seat should be left up or down. We did, however, determine early in our marriage how the toilet paper was to be mounted on the holder (over the top, of course), but she was able to explain rationally why this was important - and it made sense to me.
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