The spouse made such a point of making sure the toilet seat was always down. I never noticed till he pointed out he always put it down.
He said that the number one complaint women had was that men leave the seat up. My reply was that that seemed awfully goddamned petty.
What difference does it make? Is it true that some women say if the seat is up and they go into the bathroom at night they can fall in?
How? Do they walk backwards? Never hear of a night light?
There’s a thread about this somewhere way back in the archives.
Personally, I cannot for the life of me understand why many women make a fuss about this. What’s the big deal? I’m not handicapped, I can put the seat down myself if I need to.
If you’re falling in, maybe you should TURN ON THE LIGHT when you go into the bathroom …
A few things.
First, usually if you have a man in the house, the rim of the toilet has little yellow spots of urine and curls of pubic hair on it, and isn’t the prettiest thing in the world. Also, I’d rather not have to touch the toilet seat with my hands if I can avoid it. I generally keep the seat and the lid both down. That way things can’t fall in (it’s happened) the cats can’t drink the chemical water, the kid can’t drop toys in it, the dog can’t drink it, and it doesn’t look as gross.
I mean if it took some huge effort to put it down, it would be different, but it’s about as hard as closing the door or turning off the water after you wash your hands.
Person who hates having the seat left up checking in.
I don’t like it left up for several reasons. Due to several medical conditions I have some kidney damage, so I drink a lot of water now, and when I have to go, I have to go right then. When I wake up from a dead sleep with the urge to go
I don’t have time to be feeling around with light switches, checking the position of the seat,putting it down, getting my sleeping clothes up/down and then sitting down to go.
It’s usually get up quickly, make a cross legged run for the bathroom in the dark, praying all the way that I can hold it in. Get there, get clothing up/down and plop my butt down.
As Opal has pointed out living with men in the house (and there are three in mine) can leave the rim of the toilet a place you don’t want your skin touching.
One who doesn’t care checking in.
Must’ve been growing up sharing a bathroom with my brother, but I didn’t have a problem at all with this when I was married. Checking the position of the seat was pretty automatic for me, I could do it when I was so sleepy that I nearly couldn’t find the bathroom.
And I don’t use chemicals in the toilet, so I don’t worry about the cats. I can see where leaving the lid down would be good if you had children, though.
I too don’t see the big deal about leaving the seat up. I mean hell, if I can lift it to pee, you can drop it to pee. But I’ve been well trained and put it properly down without thinking about it anymore, so it’s kind of a moot point.
dewt
Sometime I put the seat up on purpose because it aggravates my hubby, and to here him bitch about the seat being left up is funny. 
Otherwise, the men I have lived with throughout my life have usually put the seat down… or never put it up in the first place :: shudder ::
Well, I have always cared. I don’t wake up easily and have fallen in. I really hate seeing those little yellow drops on the rim. When hubby first moved in with me, I held the lease and so it was my house. I made “the toilet seat goes down” the first and foremost house rule and it has been that way since. I make sure male guests know it. If they unapologetically leave the seat up, they are not invited back.
Why put the seat up at all – never have understood that. Maybe my aim is better than average. . .
Toilet seat up - for peeing men
Toilet seat down - for peeing women
Toilet seat down - for men taking a shit
Toilet seat down - for women taking a shit.
Let’s add a couple of many seat downs here because women go to the toilet more often then men.
Seems to me that the most considerate thing to do for all folks is to keep the toilet seat down.
I had brothers. I had a son. I had male roomies/husbands/SOs.
Now, I have no males living in the house.
I still check before I sit. Habit, no problem.
I hate having to turn lights on in the middle of the night. If i walk into the bathrooom, I have it memorized where the toilet is and I sit. Chris will never leave the seat up again after my rage at 3:00am. I was wet, my butt cold, and ANGRY! Of course my baby has neve done it again. But every time his buddies come over. I am cautious of the bathroom.
…if this is the biggest problem in your relationship you’re doing swell. Aside from the exceptional cases like Ayesha, just look before you sit. It isn’t rocket science. I mean, guys raise the seat, but they don’t fall in if they have to sit, do they? The point of the guys who have, uh, bad aim… that’s another matter.
For a time, I lived with two roommates, one female and one male. For simplicity’s sake we instituted a few easy toilet rules: seat and lid down after every use, flush after every use. Now, those things are second nature to me. It’s just a matter of reinforcing the habit.
OTOH lurkernomore, if it is very important to you and the SO stubbornly refuses there is a big problem.
There are lots of things that I do for no other reason than it pleases my husband. I let my hair grow because it pleases him. I wear colors that he likes and avoid those he doesn’t. I refrain from moving the furniture even an inch or so because it disturbs him. There are many, many more things I do for him. He in turns does things for me. He puts the toilet seat down and makes sure all guests know this is important. He also does many other things for me, even things he has no clue why he does them.
A lot of men say this issue is not important and women should just look before sitting. The point to me is that if you can’t do one thing for no other reason than someone you love wants it then you have big problems.
My wife’s a “seat down” person. Makes no difference to me, but it keeps her happy, so it isn’t a big deal.
She did have to train me, though, because it wasn’t a habit when we first met, and this is where the laughs come. She bought a device called a “Seat Beep,” which is a small plastic thingie you stick on the underside of the seat. As long as it’s horizontal (i.e. seat down), no problem. But when it’s vertical, it counts up to like two minutes (to make sure you’ve finished your business), and then starts to beep, in a loud, high-pitched, insistent tone.
After just a few late-night trips to the bathroom, back to bed, and then back to the bathroom to put the seat back down, I was well and truly trained.
Anyone who’s interested, you can get 'em at Bed Bath & Beyond or pretty much any decent-sized home-gadget type store.
Okay, ummm, lets make it even then. Put LID down.
I think it is not only toilet seat but also the lid or cover that should be normally down if only for aesthetic reasons. I guess the same as you keep the kitchen cabinets closed unless you need to open them. Then you can sit on it or leave clothes or whatever on it while it is not being used. Not to mention that an open toilet is a place where things will fall into when you least want them to.
One misconception I would like to address is that of men making more of a mess peeing. I guess some men may have pretty bad aim. On my boat, while under way, everybody is instructed to sit (although I have personally developed a technique where I sorta kneel and the hose goes right into the hole, if you know what I mean).
In my experience with women they tend to leave urine in the front of the toilet bowl and even toilet seat and i guess this is why those seats open in fron exist. Men tend to make a mess all around.
Another point is that I always clean the toilet with tissue if I see I have left anything. It seems to me cleaning the toilet (like the washbasin) for the next person is the minimum of courtesy. I am very willing to clean up after myself and extremely unwilling to clean up other people’s mess.
I’ve never much cared if the seat were up or down. I’m female and I follow a simple rule, I try to leave things as seems appropriate to the culture. So I generally leave the seat down. But when I used the bathroom at my brother’s office (unisex, but a single bathroom and there were no women who worked there or regularly used the bathroom) I left the seat up out of courtesy. I default to seat down without strong reason to suspect otherwise since both males and females need the seat down at times.
lindsay said:
And handy said:
My ex-wife needed a specific configuration at night–lid up/seat down. She didn’t really wake up to go to the bathroom–she kind of sleepwalked in, did her business, and sleepwalked back to bed. If the seat was up, she really would fall in–it happened more than once. If the lid was down, she’d sit on it and pee before she could stop herself. (She couldn’t stop herself–she didn’t have much bladder control to begin with, and sometimes didn’t make it to the bathroom anyway.)
Since lid up/seat down was necessary at night, we just left it that way all the time. We didn’t really care if someone else saw it in that state–it was a bathroom, after all.
And, no, we are not divorced because I left the seat up once too often. (I figured I better say that before someone else did.)