If your So didn’t finish their steak. Would you put it on your plate and finish it off? How about a Can of Soda. Do you have any phobias about passing the can back and forth with your So? How about licking your SO’s ice cream cone?
Now, lefts discuss your son, daughter, mom, or dad? Would you react the same way to finishing off a bowl of ice cream they had left uneaten? Share a coke? Finish off a nice rib-eye steak they were too full to eat?
Poll 1 Means you have no phobias about sharing food or plates with your SO.
2, 3, 4 indicates increasing uneasiness.
For example, you’d finish off the steak, but wouldn’t share a coke from the same can.
5-9 You’ve got some germ phobias. You’d only share a few items.
10 being the most extreme germ phobia. You want the dishes and forks sterilized in the dishwasher before meals.
Poll repeats for your close relative using the same scale.
No qualms at all about sharing or finishing off a meal with someone I know, who is reasonably clean and disease-free. Or sharing a drink or a toothbrush.
Would (and have) share publically-served food with complete strangers.
But - and I know it makes no sense given the above - I’d be very hesitant to share anything on a single-serving plate or drinking vessel with someone I don’t know.
I wouldn’t share a toothbrush with anyone, but everything else I’m cool with, as long as I’m reasonably sure they don’t have hepatitis C. I’m kind of a germaphobe with regards to doorknobs, computer mouses, etc., but oddly enough, sharing food or drinks with my family and friends doesn’t bother me at all. Plus, I figure that I’ve kissed enough men that if I was going to catch something, I already would have.
I ranked myself a 3 with my SO and 6 with my Relatives.
I have no issues snagging my SO’s left over steak or solid foods. Normally, I’d rather not drink from the same can of soda or share an ice cream cone. But, I have shared cokes and ice cream on really, really hot days when I didn’t want to go in the house for my own. So, 3 is about right. What minor germ issues I have can easily be pushed aside if I need to.
Can’t see myself licking my moms or kids ice cream cone or food directly from their mouths. I would trim off the bite marks from the steak and eat it. Hence the 6.
I don’t like irrational germaphobia at all. In my experience, it is ignorance and paranoia that is the root cause of it for most people. It is one thing if your grandmother is dying of AIDS or TB and you want to take proper precautions. It is quite another if you just get a vague ick feeling with no rational explanation and use that to dictate your actions.
Like most people, I was created from secretions from my father’s penis and painfully forced out of my mother’s vagina with much blood and gore. Once you start off life that way, I think it should put things in perspective. I changed my kids diapers thousands of times dealing with every conceivable disgusting mess in the process and I have spent hours trying to get their vomit out of the back seat. A SO without an acute case of something shouldn’t present a problem for anyone. Sharing used silverware is mild compared to rubbing exposed mucus membranes forcefully together.
I guess I’m near the extreme of germophobes so far at 8 for SO and 9 for close relatives. It really has no connection with fear of catching a disease, though. It’s more of a privacy thing, but I can’t really explain that in any way that will make sense to you all. It helps that my family is all the same way.
Consider the sexual acts you have performed on your SO, or even just kissing (even on the cheek, when it comes to other relatives). Do you really wash your hands before eating everything? What about snacks you grab on the way to work, do you ever consider everywhere your hands have been since the last washing? Face, car, keys, windscreen, public door handles…
I cannot share dairy products with anyone! That’s just gross! For example milkshakes? Get your own, don’t drink mine! And I don’t care who wants a drink, answer is no…or yes, just take it.
I don’t have an SO…it’s just my 10-year-old daughter and me, so I answered “Other”. When sharing food/beverage with my daughter, I have no problems. Sharing with anyone else is just disgusting and germy!
This is probably very much related to how someone was raised. If you grew up eating off dishes from the dishwasher and never touched another persons food, then you’ll probably carry that with you into adulthood.
I’ve gotten a lot better. When I first started dating it really grossed me out to share food or drink with a date. We just didn’t do that in my childhood home. I’m a lot more relaxed about it now. It took a few years, but by the time I got past college it was almost never an issue.
Grandma after eating her steak by grabbing it in her hand and biting it? Fuck no.
Mom dipping her bread (often, her already-bitten bread) in the tray of meat instead of pouring juice onto her plate and then dipping? Both Littlebro and I will refrain from having seconds. The woman needs to be told her breath stinks relatively frequently and has some other, ehrm, sadly unquestionable hygienic practices I’d rather not describe in a thread about eating, plus there’s also a factor of social rejection; that dipping is too close to “take a spoonful from the cooking pot and step back” - a social class to which as far as we can tell our family hasn’t belonged, not even those who lived in some of the poorest parts of Spain. We have plates, use them. She would not accept that behavior from us, but hey, when she does it she’s surprised we reject it from her.
Either Bro or a friend who eats in a way I see as hygienic, such as offering half a sandwich before even biting into it, and who doesn’t need to be told to brush his teeth before leaving the house? Sure, hand it over.
I voted 1 for SO and other for close relative. I have shared a plate with my mom and my daughter, but would not be comfortable doing that with my sister or brother.
I wouldn’t share a toothbrush with someone, but I have no problem sharing a glass or a plate with anyone I know. I have a healthy immune system and I’m going to keep it that way by making it WORK. I’ve taken swigs off of strangers’ flasks, which in retrospect of a friend of mine getting mono, probably isn’t a good idea, but I’m probably not going to stop either. The alcohol will kill the germs, right? (… no.)
I don’t even have problems sharing food/drinks with complete strangers, provided they’re not slobbering all over it or something. Why should it matter?
Because that’s not sharing food. Food has stuff in it which, hopefully, your genitals don’t. Also, for kissing and sex I’m willing to take risks that I won’t just for sharing food.
But I admit it’s irrational (I’m a ten). I’ve been gradually learning to share at least drinks because so many people are really bothered about me being bothered about this. But it still makes me feel majorly disgusted.
I have always been like this (I remember one of my sisters being offended when I just passed the ice-cream over to her after she leaned over and took a lick - you’d think she’d be happy to get the whole ice-cream).
I also had amoebic dysentry which left me ill for a long time, and my digestive system is kinda oversensitive; I think it’s like when I couldn’t face the thought of eating eggs for a couple of years after getting food poisoning from pancakes. I’d try to eat eggs and either feel nauseous or actually puke. Even after I realised that it was most likely the extremely out-of-date flour that caused the food poisoning, it took a long time before my body would catch up with my brain.
Don’t know what caused me to be like this even as a kid, because I’m not germ-phobic in general. My brothers and sisters occasionally teased me more than was probably appropriate for our age difference, and I’ll bet that one time one of them spat in my food, or said they had, and then I got sick - probably unconnected - and joined the dots.
