I did them regularly, clenching and unclenching first thing in the morning and throughout the day. I hoped that when put to the test, those inner muscles would do their job and prevent me from another embarrassing episode.
They didn’t. I took to preemptively peeing every hour or two, pressing down against my bladder to ensure there’d be nothing left if he caught me off guard. But even with that precaution, with him, my laughter won out. I’ve learned that urine incontinence is actually very common, affecting 50% of adult women, according to the Mayo Clinic Health System. But my problem was very specific to my relationship. When I laughed around other people, I was fine. But he continued to set me off.
I had to accept the fact that dating Drew meant I had to risk being the woman knocking over her glass of water at a local pizzeria in a mad dash to the bathroom and keeping a towel on my seat on the couch.
I’ve come to believe there are actually some upsides to my messy predicament. When he makes me laugh so hard I pee, he snaps me out of my constant looping fears. My laughter physically shakes me, from my bobbing head to jiggling belly on down. It feels like it’s rising up from somewhere deep in my soul; I’m one with the laughter, a gift he’s given me that I have no choice but to accept.
When I tip over into being a laugh factory, there’s no room for stressful, obsessive thoughts — or any thoughts at all. My body has no guardrails up. Maybe it knew, that very first time, that he was someone it was OK to let go with, in every sense of the phrase.
One recent afternoon, after an epic laugh-fest that had me changing my entire outfit, including my socks, I stood in front of the rumbling laundry machine and closed my eyes. I wasn’t proud of being no closer to solving my problem, of now being a woman in my late 40s who couldn’t contain her urine, but I was no longer embarrassed. That feeling had melted into not just resigned acceptance, but profound gratitude.
Rather than Drew sharing his every thought with me like I do with him, making me laugh is his love language. When he pulls his T-shirt over his head and waddles like a penguin or sneaks “bag of dicks” onto our grocery list, I can’t help but crack up. He forces me to remember that I’m a body as well as a brain, and that sometimes, the latter needs to surrender to the former.
When I laugh hard, it’s infectious; he often does too, even when he doesn’t know why. The times I don’t have to pee, I’ll nuzzle my face into his quivering neck, in a feedback loop that speaks volumes wordlessly. Losing ourselves in laughter fortifies us for times when there’s nothing to laugh about.
Drew managed to pass a test I didn’t even know I’d needed him to: the pee test. Not once has he ever shamed me for peeing; he’s amused by it, and finally, so am I.
Though I always hope it’s the last time, our history together tells me I’ll probably be pee-laughing for the rest of my life. I’d rather love someone who can make me lose control than someone who never tries to get that close. That he can tap so deeply into a side of me I don’t even fully understand means more to me than his sweetest endearments.
It’s one thing to hear “I love you” each morning, and another to see it in action when your partner hands you a Clorox wipe to clean up a puddle of your own urine. I’ve stocked up and am ready for a lifetime of happy accidents.
Rachel Kramer Bussel writes about sex, dating, books, culture and herself. She is the editor of over 70 anthologies, including the “Best Women’s Erotica of the Year” series, and edits the Substack publication Open Secrets. She’s currently editing an anthology of essays about our personal attachments to our belongings. Visit her website, rachelkramerbussel.com, and follow her on Twitter @raquelita and Instagram @rachelkramerbussel.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
