There are two things which unite us all: a need to be loved, and going to the lavatory.
Yet while we will openly discuss relationship woes with anybody who will listen, we are somehow more reluctant to share details of our toilet business - even with those who profess to have fallen in love with us.
However, no relationship stays constant: they all evolve, through ups and downs, and that includes our attitude to the universal matter of doing a poo. Here are the 21 phases of every relationship, which we have kindly illustrated with a number of sweet-looking crap-based cakes.
Yet while we will openly discuss relationship woes with anybody who will listen, we are somehow more reluctant to share details of our toilet business - even with those who profess to have fallen in love with us.
However, no relationship stays constant: they all evolve, through ups and downs, and that includes our attitude to the universal matter of doing a poo. Here are the 21 phases of every relationship, which we have kindly illustrated with a number of sweet-looking crap-based cakes.
Phase 1: You have begun a new relationship. You pretend that you do not have any bodily functions whatsoever. You will go to extreme lengths to hide these bodily functions from your partner, terrified at the prospect of what may happen if they learn the disgusting truth about your body, and the foul behaviours it wishes to perform.
Phase 2: You are now willing to permit your partner to learn that your body is capable of certain sexy functions, and allow them to see that you have a bottom.
Phase 3: Hotel stays will require repeated trips to the lobby toilets/nearest public facility in order to relieve yourself of any unwanted intestinal products; neither of you will use the toilet in your room for anything other than brushing your teeth and showering. You stay awake the night before the trip, wracked with anxiety, while knocking back fistfuls of immodium.
Phase 4: You are now prepared to use hotel room toilets, but your partner must agree to leave the room, and go for a walk/wait downstairs. With their fingers in their ears, just in case.
Phase 5: Euphemisms such as "I require a brief sit down", or "I have to go upstairs and read a book" - delivered with a raised eyebrow and a wink - are employed tentatively, when the need arises.
Phase 6: You are now prepared to use hotel room toilets, but your partner must turn up the TV volume as loudly as possible, and block up their nose with perfumed rags. You will turn on the shower and the sink taps before evacuating your anus, and squirt deodorant/body spray around the bathroom before you emerge. You will demand that your partner wait at least an hour before using the toilet after you.
Phase 7: You are prepared to use hotel room toilets, but your partner must agree to lay face down on the bed, and bellow wordlessly until you emerge. You will still turn on the shower and the sink taps before releasing your stools, and squirt deodorant/body spray around the bathroom before leaving. However, you will demand that your partner leave only half an hour before using the toilet after you.
Phase 8: For the first time you are prepared to tell your partner that you need a poo, rather than skirt around the issue knowingly. It is a glorious, watershed moment in your romance.
Phase 9: You no longer feel you will be judged for having bowel movements. You are relieved to discover that he/she is just like you. It draws you closer together. You have given your toilet nonsense cute pet names, such as "Boom boom" and "Wacky-cacky".
Phase 10: Liberated, you now take ever greater risks with your toilet business, testing the limits of your love. You will gladly describe your toilet-going to your partner in semi-vague terms. "Yes, it was satisfying" and "I feel much better".
Phase 11: Disaster! One or both of you has a stomach bug. It is impossible to hide your toiletting as you once did. Out of concern and love, you are forced into discussing the consistency of your "360-degree brownaround" movements. Fearing that this will rock your relationship, it unexpectedly has the opposite effect. You have seen a new, vulnerable side to your partner, and vice-versa.
Phase 12: Your euphemisms have become more graphic, along the lines of "I need to lay an egg" and "Mr Brown is popping over for a visit" and "Ding ding! It's chocolate time!".
Phase 13: During hotel stays, for the sake of ease, you'll willingly go to toilet while your partner waits in the bedroom. At most you might shrug, and suggest he or she "Give it a minute before going in there".
Phase 14: You have possibly moved in together by this point. You openly discuss the need to buy lavatory paper on the weekly shop, making it clear that you are just like everyone else in your need to wipe. The euphemisms have gone, to be replaced with more direct language; "I need a poo", or "I'm busting for a shit".
Phase 15: You are willing to share most details of your toilet habits with your partner; the number of times you go during the day, the amount of wipes required etc. You no longer clean any errant streaks off the bowl before leaving the bathroom, merely hiding them with a sheet of paper. There is even an edge of boasting when you do discuss these "issues of the brown".
Phase 16: You tell your partner about the times when you were a kid, and you pooed yourself at your cousin's wedding, on Dartmoor, and in Londis.
Phase 17: You both share details of your toilet business openly and often without prompting. You discuss colour, consistency, size. There is an element of one-upmanship regarding your habits. You even laugh about the days when neither of you would so much as entertain the suggestion that you had bowel movements. Whatever happened to those innocent, loved-up, kids?
Phase 18: On the rare occasions when you do talk to one another, most of your conversation revolves around going to the toilet.
Phase 19: Suddenly, the romance has gone. You complain about the stench your partner leaves behind him/her. You have to stomach listening to the splashes, squeaks and parps, which are no longer masked by coughs and improvised mufflers constructed from lavatory paper. It's almost as if you're both going out of your way to make as much noise as possible.
Phase 20: You go to the toilet with the door open, or sit on the lavatory while your partner is in the bath, ignoring their protests of revulsion/gagging.
Phase 21: You will go to the toilet in the bath, while your partner is in the bath.
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