Love Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry...For Being Gross

I recently spent the weekend in bed with a terrible stomach bug. At the stroke of midnight on Friday, I began puking my brains out, and what didn't come up as vomit came out the other end. The next day, I thought the worst of it—the diarrhea—was over, but I was still happy when my boyfriend Nick showed up with supplies to calm my still-upset stomach. We hung out in bed, watching cartoons, while I drank ginger tea and tried to stop passing gas. One particularly gross fart sputtered forth and I sat very still. The Frisky: When In A Relationship Do You "Let Yourself Go"?

"Baby, that one really stinks," Nick said. "And it sounded wet." I ran for the bathroom and was absolutely horrified by what I saw in my underwear. Nick knocked as I tried to scrub the poo and humiliation from my body.

"Are you OK?" he asked. "Did you poop on yourself?"

"No! Of course not! Get out!" I'm a terrible liar under pressure. Clean but still feeling dirty, I went back to the bedroom and put on fresh panties and pajamas pants, all without looking him in the eye.

"Well, did you?"

"Yes." I hung my head in shame. "I'm so, so embarrassed. I'm sorry."

"It's OK," Nick said. "You don't have to be embarrassed in front of me."

In the three years Nick and I have been together, we've gotten very close because, well, we're not afraid to be gross. Nick was my first college hook-up after my long-distance relationship with my first boyfriend ended. I wanted things to be perfect. I put in work with a Swedish file after every shower and always had a neat, perfectly trimmed landing strip whenever we spent the night together. That semester, I was so poor that every few weeks, I bit down hard on a towel and did my own bikini waxes in the privacy of my tiny dorm room.

A few months into our almost-relationship, I realized Nick wasn't the type of guy to freak out over grooming. How? He farted on me. We were lying in his top bunk, talking to his roommate on the bottom bunk before falling asleep and he let one rip. I was mid-sentence, his flatulence a very foul, very real taste in my mouth. As it turned out, Nick is the only person on this earth who lacks the ability to be embarrassed. He apologized for the smell, not the act itself, and five minutes later, rolled on top of me to fart again. We've been passing gas together ever since.

I suppose it only makes sense that toilet humor is front and center in our relationship. When we first got together, we were constantly ducking into the bathroom to mess around because he lived with seven of his closest friends. I'd go into the bathroom to wash my hands and emerge 15 minutes later looking disheveled, guilty and very pleased. Nick's roommates patiently waited to shave while we giggled in the shower, taking turns washing each other. I loved to watch the body wash turn into perfect peaked foam on his chest hair. The first time he saw me in my powder blue shower cap, he doubled over laughing. The Frisky: First Time For Everything: Shacking Up