Symbolism and "breaking the barrier"

A word of warning: this post probably epitomises my tendency to overthink everything...

I promised myself yesterday's post would be the last one about dating for a while (unless my fortunes changed a LOT), but this is just too funny, and too good for making a point, to leave on the side:

Synopsis (using paraphrases):

Woman: "I want to start leaving my stuff at yours"
Man: **FARTS**
Woman: Eeeww!
Man: It's totally equivalent - you want to leave stuff here, so we "broke the barrier" of being comfortable around each other.
Time passes.
Woman: **Farts in front of boyfriend**
Man: Eeww!
Woman: We broke the barrier, remember?
Man: I broke the barrier!
Woman: **Farts in front of man at every opportunity, ending with...
Woman: **as they lean in to kiss she whispers, "I'm shitting my pants right now"**
Man ends the relationship

(A caption at the start says that it was inspired by a real couple.)

Now, let's assume for the moment that the woman's behaviour was not, in fact, a passive-aggressive retaliation for (a) the initial act of farting in her presence, and (b) the double-standards then adopted by the man with regards to farting in each other's presence. If it was, then probably not great in r/l dating, but still a very funny "He really got what he deserved there!" comedy sketch.

With that assumption in mind, let's look at what happened in terms of the messages communicated.

The opening scene is everything in this. The initial message is the woman's "Maybe I should start leaving my stuff here." This could mean any number of things, from, "I want to move to the next level of commitment" to simply, "I spend a lot of time here, it would be practical if I had my own toiletries and such here." What boyfriend hears is, "I think we have moved to the next level of commitment," or something similar to that.

What follows is his assumption as to what that means. Particularly, his statement implies that he has not felt able to relax until this moment: he has been guarding against possible rejection (the belief that she might not want him if he allows himself to fart while he's with her). In psychoanalytic terms such as those discussed by Dr Eric Berne (you can get a sense of my attitude towards those theories from the preamble here, I suppose that he would be considered an anal personality with these issues, and the fact that the point over which the issue comes to the fore was specifically farting, would doubtless be used as evidence of that theory... but I digress.

The point is, he feels able to relax his guard and no longer as if he needs to pass the audition. She has accepted him.

So, he relaxes. And when he relaxes, the fart erupts.

This puts him in the uncomfortable position of having to justify feeling okay to fart around her, which he does by explaining the increased level of comfort/intimacy that he feels she has introduced with her request to leave stuff at his place.

Which sends the message to her that farting is seen as a romantic activity - a way of expressing intimacy, bonding, affection and romance. The "shared fart" becomes a symbol of what she likes about their relationship, one of the private things that says, "We are a Couple." To the boyfriend, it is just relief that the audition period is over.

So, when a week later she passes wind in his presence, he is surprised and offended. Such is the nature of assumed gender roles in dating, that men rarely view women as being "on audition" in the way they feel themselves to be (one of the regularly-stated pieces of pick-up artists' advice is "frame" - to project the idea that she is the one being auditioned, and thus project confidence). There is also the stereotype of women not farting generally.

It's possible to read her continued (and then exaggerated) farting in front of him, in a number of ways. There's the passive-aggressive stance that we rejected above; there's the continued, "this is our special signal of intimacy"; and there's the possibility that she has read his rejection of her fart as a rejection of her and now needs to find out what level of intimacy exists by periodically seeing how he reacts to her fart. It could even be that she feels like she has permission to do something that she normally feels denied, and now just wants to let rip (double-meaning entirely intended) and have fun with it (for instance, the "cup o'cheese!" attack towards the end!)

Whichever reason there is, it still adds up to one thing: farting is given an unusual significance and symbolism in the relationship that is created and escalated by the assumptions made by each party.

Nathan @ 21st Century Dating wrote recently about avoiding value judgements over certain actions, and the same kind of principle is at play here, even though it opens with a positive judgement (she has accepted me). The facts are that she has asked to leave stuff at his place; this could simply mean (as mentioned above) that she thinks it is practical given the amount of time they spend together. It is a value judgement that it means acceptance or greater intimacy.

In such situations, I have a tendency to go with a, "it sounds like..." statement, to check that my understanding reflects what she feels it means. For example, in the "maybe I should leave my stuff here" scenario, the reply could be, "I'd like that, because it sounds like you feel more comfortable around me."

While I was sceptical at Nathan's over the value of "can we talk about this?", in the video's scenario where the man becomes troubled by his girlfriend's developed pattern of farting in front of, or at, him, it is clear that "can we talk about this?" is important because the significance of the act is more entangled. If, instead of, "We broke the barrier, you know, we don't always have to..." he sets out that her making a big deal out of it is making him uncomfortable (essentially, re-erecting the barrier, or some such) then it opens the door for talking about feeling relaxed rather than applying significance to the act.