A woman is in a strange conundrum after discovering, to her horror, what her boyfriend had been doing in the bathroom of her new apartment.
In a post on Reddit’s r/NoStupidQuestions, user Weekly-Marketing-Shift1035 says she’s recently moved into a new apartment and her boyfriend has visited her there every day. She explained they were happily watching a movie together when he excused himself to use the bathroom.
He returned, and soon after that she headed there herself. Then she noticed something in the bathroom trash: “As im handling my business i look down at my trash can and it’s unusual piece of tissue in there and im looking at it wondering what it is… and im like it’s “S–T.”
At least in this case the boyfriend is happy to use his girlfriend’s bathroom, unlike this Texan woman who resisted going at her boyfriend’s place for so long she ended up in the ER.
“Is this an unusual thing?”
Disgusted and confused, she summoned him to the bathroom and demanded to know why he’s putting soiled toilet tissue in the trash can rather than flushing it. She says he was “embarrassed… rightfully so!” at her interrogation, but attempted to say that this is just the way he was taught to use the bathroom.
And so to the million-dollar question: “is this an unusual thing or do people do this a lot . we’re different ethnicities ( im black and he’s mexican) so i was wondering if it’s cultural thing?”
The top reply underlines that this is indeed a cultural thing, explaining that, “A lot of countries don’t have good plumbing that can handle even toilet paper, so they throw away their used paper. This is absolutely a real thing, and it can be a real challenge to change the habit.”
Another said this is indeed common in some parts of Mexico: “Mexicans sometimes grew up with this, esp if their parents grew up without modern sewer infrastructure. In such places you CAN’T flush toilet paper.” In addition, “To add further context, we (Mexicans) also take out the toilet trash everyday. It’s not really that unfortunate, there’s also an etiquette to folding the toilet paper so the doo doo don’t show.”
So, while the boyfriend may have appeared to be disgusting, it seems he was likely telling the truth that this is the way he was raised to use the bathroom. The responses conclude it’s nice to get one of these posts where nobody is really in the wrong: “The context is unfortunate, but it’s really nice to see for a change that the partner isn’t just a disgusting liar, and it’s actually a known cultural difference! Hopefully positive discourse between OP and her partner happen!”
Cultural difference or not, we hope that in the future, this girlfriend doesn’t have to deal with this situation again. Of course, as potentially disgusting as this situation was, at least it’s nothing compared to this unfortunate Australian who spent three hours waist-deep in sewage after a toilet collapsed under her.
Published: Aug 13, 2026 07:55 am