How to Not Fart in Bed

What is not farting in bed?
Why is not farting in bed important?
How to fart less in bed
How to fart quietly in bed
Suppressing fart smells
Talk to your partner about farting in bed
Finding the right partner to fart in bed with

Farting, passing gas, breaking wind. It’s said we all do it, but smart people know girls don’t. Either way, one of the greatest pleasures in life is relieving oneself of bothersome gas while in bed. After all, bed is a personal and intimate place, where comfort is the highest priority.

However, bed is also, for lucky people, a place of romance and cohabitation. Generally speaking, it isn’t polite to fart while near other people. The range outside of which farting is acceptable is a matter of sound and smell.

If you can smell a fart, or if you can hear a fart, you are in the Fart Zone. It is thought that polite, and sexually appealing, humans will attempt to hold in their farts when other sentient beings are inside the Fart Zone. Nobody knows if reptiles fart. Just kidding, they do.

Never farting is not possible, and furthermore, never farting in bed is also not possible. However, there are a number of tips and tricks you can use to keep your toots under the radar and out of your partner’s nose.

This article will teach you how to:

• Fart less frequently in bed
• Fart quietly in bed
• Control the odor of your farts in bed
• Talk to your partner about farting in bed
• Find the right partner to fart in bed with

Minimally, this article will teach you how to do some of these things. But moreover, not farting in bed is important because it leads to a better, more restful night’s sleep for you, which will improve everything from your work productivity, to your fitness levels, as well as your sex life.

What is not farting in bed?

As stated earlier, not farting in bed is a fool’s errand. Everybody farts in bed (other than, perhaps, attractive women). Not farting in bed is farting silently in a way that also suppresses odor. Not farting in bed means not having your farts detected by your partner, or whoever you share a bed with.

While semantically (and perhaps philosophically) this creates a paradox, whereby not farting is farting, for our practical purposes, this makes sense.

In other words, epistemologically, it is possible. That is to say, humans can only “know” what they derive a priori or through their senses. It is impossible to know a priori if someone has farted in bed. If your partner cannot sense your farts, they cannot experience them. If their experiential world has never contained you farting in bed, then you do not fart in bed. Therefore, if your partner cannot sense your farts in bed (smell, feel, hear, see, or taste them), you have not farted in bed.

Why is not farting in bed important?

It’s important to not fart in bed because it could ruin your chances of having sex. Additionally, it could make a restful night’s sleep more difficult for your partner. It’s also kind of gross to smell someone else’s farts, even in places other than bed.

It turns out, there are a lot of good reasons not to fart in bed. Important to remember, however, is if you’re sleeping in a room alone, it doesn’t matter if you fart in bed. In fact, farting as you please will probably create a more comfortable physical state for you, leading to a more restful sleep.

Some situations when it is a good idea to not fart in bed:

• Sleeping with your life partner
• Sleeping with a casual sexual partner
• Summer camp
• School trips
• Cabin weekend with friends
• Shopping for mattresses 

It cannot be overstated: “Not farting in bed” should be read as “farting undetectably in bed.” Humans can physically hold in their farts by flexing their pelvic-floor muscles, but this is a losing battle. Holding in farts for too long will lead to extreme physical discomfort and will likely necessitate a very loud or smelly fart once it does accidentally seep out.

How to fart less in bed

Everyone knows some nights are more farty than others. This can be attributed to a few known factors. Following these basic principles, you too can have a less bloated, less smelly somnolence.

• Don’t overeat at dinner or close to bedtime
• Avoid cruciferous foods
• Chew food more completely/Take smaller bites
• Poop before bed
• Engage in light, pro-digestive movements before bed

Don’t overeat at dinner or close to bedtime

You need to fart because your body creates gasses from the natural digestion process. Your body can absorb some of this gas, but the rest of it needs to come out in some way. Introducing: farts and burps.

If you don’t want to fart in bed, make sure you’ve started this digestion process long before you slip under the covers. But furthermore, don’t stuff your face at dinner or eat a ton of ice cream right before bed.

Think about it, digestion creates gas. This is normal. If you eat more food, your body will need to digest more food. This will create more gas. It’s that simple. Consider taking a doggy bag home next time you get Thai food out with your friends and significant other. You’ll feel better afterwards, and fart less in bed.

Also, undigested carbohydrates are a common source of excess gas. If you eat a bunch of starchy foods, there’s no way your body will be able to digest all of it in the small intestine and stomach alone. By the time it passes to the late digestive tract, your smoke stack will be puffing hot air.

It’s easy to chow down on a big side of French fries, or go hard at an Italian restaurant, but watch out. These common mistakes could have your sphincter blowing out birthday candles all night.

Avoid lots of cruciferous foods

While your stomach will naturally create gas during digestion, some foods will affect the amount of type of gasses created.

Hydrogen gas is possibly the most plentiful fart fuel created by your guts. Good news though, it’s odorless. Methane and sulfur dioxide, however, will garner looks of consternation from your partner in the bedroom.

Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts) naturally produce more of these stinky gasses during digestion. They are super healthy though, and shouldn’t be avoided entirely. It’s fine to get some broccoli in your stir fry, but avoid eating an entire stalk raw with ranch dressing.

Final note on vegetables, they contain a lot of fiber. A lot of times, we get tingle toots when our bodies are preparing for a bowel movement (BM). The same muscles that move solid objects toward your aft end also deal in gasses. The more fiber you eat, especially later in the day, could impact how much you fart in bed.

Chew your food more completely and take smaller bites

So far, we’ve only mentioned digestion processes as a means for gas to enter your digestive tract. However, swallowing air is a big time contributor when it comes to bloating and hot air.

Usually, swallowed air comes out the top end of things — think sodas, beers, and other carbonated beverages. While a burp can be considered impolite or embarrassing, farts are worse. Many times, this air can’t make it back out from whence it came, and it has to take the long way ‘round.

Some swallowed air can’t be avoided (what’re you going to do, get wine at a dive bar?), but there are other ways to achieve this goal. For one, eating slower, and chewing your food more completely. Not only will this table manners best practice decrease the amount of air in your mouth, it’ll also make you seem like less of a boor, which will increase your chances of having sex. 

Additionally, chewing your food more completely will help you avoid talking with your mouth full, which will help you avoid talking, which will have the unintended consequence of making you a better listener, which will increase your chances of having sex with the person you’re listening to.

Pro tip: if you take smaller bites of food, it’ll be easier to chew your food more completely. You’ll eat slower, which will probably make you eat less, which might change your body composition, which might make you more attractive, resulting in a higher likelihood of having sex.

Have a bowel movement close to bedtime

It’s not always the case, but sometimes farts are the precursor to a much needed BM. If this is the case, you might be able to prevent the stinky squeaks with a pre-bed trip to the porcelain throne.

Furthermore, poop farts (defined as farts occurring just before or during a no. 2) are smellier. While wider research in this area is needed, it’s common sense that air flowing around a piece of poop will pick up some of the poop-ether on the way. Why poop smells is a whole other issue.

Incorporate movement into your pre-bed routine

Looking to set your farts and feces free before getting into bed with your lover? Movement has been known for years to promote healthy and timely bowel movements and to relieve gaseous bloating. 

In fact, various digestive yoga practices are specifically designed for this purpose, and have helped people suffering from IBS, Crohns, and other chronic digestive diseases mitigate their symptoms.

But maybe yoga isn’t your thing, or your small, metropolitan apartment barely has enough free floor space to walk sideways through your kitchen. Fear not, other low-intensity movements are an excellent way to aid digestion and relieve gas. A casual night time walk will have great benefits when it comes to digestion and bloating. It will have the added benefit of promoting fatigue before bedtime, thus helping you sleep better, thus helping you have better sex in the future.

Those extra steps will also, over time, help burn more calories and increase leg definition, which might, maybe, lead to more sex.

Vigorous activity isn’t recommended, as this will neither help you release farts, nor help you wind down before bed.

How to fart quietly in bed

Farting quietly in bed is step one to making sure your partner (or other people nearby) don’t know you’ve passed gas. Noise is created by movement of air. This is science and you can look it up. That being said, all methods to fart more quietly involve understanding and mitigating these air movements. Faster or more powerful vibrations make for louder sounds. This is also science, and important when considering the volume of your pookies.

There are a few commonly understood ways to fart quietly:

• Fart quietly by using correct posture and physical relaxation
• Fart quietly by absorbing or reducing vibrations
• Lessen the audio profile of farts by using distractions. 

Fart quieter using posture and physicality

Loud farts are simply a matter of physics. Basically, if you force air through a smaller opening, it’s going to move through with greater force. This is the same principle that enables hydraulic presses to lift, move, or compress massive amounts of weight. For our purposes, this greater force means flapping skin, which means vibrations, air movements, and loud noises. This is mostly correct — I am not a scientist.

By either relaxing your sphincter or making the opening wider, your farts will go through a larger passageway with less force, resulting in quieter action.

Exhaling and breathing steadily while farting is a great way to trick your body into relaxing. A lot of people want to hold their breath and purse their lips when trying to release a fart quietly, but this is actually the exact opposite of what you want to do. Unintentionally, this closed and nervous posturing will make you tense up, from head to toe to butthole. Your farts will be high pitched and whiny, not unlike an alarm clock that wakes your partner each morning.

Also, don’t force it or try to hold it in. Forcing it out will push the air faster, thus creating more vibrations and noise. Trying to clench and hold it in will make a smaller opening — this could make an otherwise silent fart into a squeaky monster.

Posture is also a major contributor to the volume and timbre of your farts. Lying on your side and raising one leg tends to elongate the butthole into a more elliptical shape. This will let air pass slowly and steadily through the fart canal without making a noise. University-level research in this area is thin, but anecdotal studies have shown side-sleeping to be the best posture for quiet farts. Back sleeping is a great way to hold in your farts, as this additional pressure on your hind quarters will make clenching and containing gas easier. However, this is a losing strategy, long term.  Eventually, the pressure will build and build and need to be released. When this happens, you risk a very loud, very smelly fart.

Fart quietly by using your environment to reduce vibrations.

Wooden chairs and leather covered cushions are known to amplify farts. Fart suppressing pads and fabrics have been used for centuries to lessen the impact of gassy bodily emissions. The secret is to find a material that’s both soft, but also thick-woven enough to act as both sound barrier and sound suppressor.

When lying on your side in bed, try to place extra layers of sheet and bedspread directly against your posterior in order to capture all the waves of air pressure before they become lost in the world. For added protection, use extra pillows outside the sheets and covers, also directly against the butt. This adds yet another layer of protection to the pookie, using the tools you have available at three AM. 

There’s debate as to whether or not farting on pillows can lead to other, even more negative health consequences, namely pink eye. Rather than trade a smelly room for goopy morning-eyes, make sure the pillow is at least two or three layers of fabric between your underwear and fart pillow. Better yet, keep multiple pillows on your bed, some for sleeping, some for other activities, like farting in bed. This can be a great use for those decorative pillows you have no other use for during nighttime hours.

Lessen the fart profile using distractions

Back in the nineteen-nineties, singing, coughing, or speaking loudly while farting was a commonly accepted way to obscure fart noises. Today, these methods are widely known to be offensive and ineffective.

However, poor quality of sleep due to noise pollution or underlying life anxiety is common. One way light-sleepers of the world deal with this issue is to use white noise machines. You too could use a white noise machine, if only to cover up the sounds of your farting at night. Place the white noise machine closer to your partner for maximum fart-obscuring benefit.

Additionally, many savvy human beings use fans, air conditioners, and air purifiers as white noise implements. These methods have the added benefit of dispersing or eliminating odors from the air. If your hot air is particularly foul smelling, consider one of these options for both noise and odor suppression.

Opening a window at night will also have the benefit of dispersing bad odors and creating background noise. This, however, is only an option when the weather and temperature are cooperative, and if the noise outside doesn’t detract from you or your partner’s quality of sleep.

Fart odor suppression

Controlling the odor of your farts in bed is, somewhat, easier than controlling the noise factors. That is to say, the smell of your farts is largely related to what you eat, and you can control that  to an extent. Cruciferous vegetables and other food sources high in sulfur are necessary for your body to function optimally, but there’s no need to overdo it. Raffinose — a sugar found in beans — as well as sugar alcohols used to sweeten “low sugar” foods are also known to make farts smell horrendous.

Ever have hot farts? The air passing through your anus isn’t actually any warmer, but capsaicin — a chemical found in spicy foods that makes your mouth tingle — also has the same effect on the soft, supple skin of your butthole. Feeling aside, spicy farts smell worse (citation not needed).

Furthermore, you can take proactive steps to control the smell of your environment. As mentioned previously, air purifiers can serve a dual purpose — covering both the scent and sound of your farts. The noise also, apparently, helps people sleep, and the functionality of said machines makes the air healthier to breathe.

Open windows create a natural source of ventilation for your smelly farts, because dilution is the solution to pollution.

Air fresheners of the electronic, oil-based, or aerosol variety mask odors well, but aren’t a long term solution. Mixing a Glade plug-in with a night’s worth of Vietnamese-food-farts won’t solve any problems.

One unscientific method for suppressing fart odor is actually the same as for noise. That is to say, heavy blankets (cloth filtration) do well to keep quiet but smelly farts out of your partner’s nose. The key is to have a heavy, thick woven cover and a tight seal. If your covers aren’t wrapped close to your body, air pockets will let your Fart Zone spread past the barrier. Obviously, comfort will be sacrificed on warm nights. This method cannot be deployed during summer months if you don’t have air conditioning. Also, you risk becoming a sheet-hog in the night, thus pissing off your partner even more than if you were to accidentally fart a few times. This is an advanced strategy that might take upwards of a full year to optimize.

How to talk with your partner about farting in bed

Addressing nighttime farting can be a sensitive and embarrassing topic to discuss with your partner. This is why the best strategy is to not talk about it at all.

Use the methods mentioned above, and you’ll be able to sleep 85% comfortably for the rest of your life. Furthermore, sharing a bed with your loved one is among the greatest rewards of a committed, long term relationship. The intimate touches and gentle morning snuggles are the physical manifestation of an emotional connection. All this is to say, you may be sad whenever your partner is away on business or whatever. Farting like a coal-powered steamship from the late 19th century will give you something to look forward to on these lonely nights.

If you must, however, discussing farting in bed with your partner should be proactive, rather than reactionary. If you think farting in bed is going to be a serious problem for you, it’s best to discuss your bowel issues before embarking on a committed co-sleeping arrangement. For example, persons with IBS, Crohns, colitis, or any other sort of tummy troubles should be honest about their condition and work to have contingency plans in place, should flare ups arise.

If your nighttime crop dusting isn’t so serious, perhaps you can still address the subject of farting in bed without waiting until it’s an issue. Offhand comments like, “Oh, I really don’t think we should order brussel sprouts, dear. I don’t want to fumigate our bedroom tonight,” will let your partner know you’re thinking seriously about not farting in bed. Similarly, a simple warning can go a long way, “Listen, hun, I don’t know that the fish and chips was a good choice for me tonight. Can I crack the window, just in case?”

Finding the right partner to fart in bed with

If you’re cutting the cheese so loudly and pungently at night that it habitually disturbs others’ sleep, it’s unlikely anyone will just let it slide. You’ll want to get this under control using the steps described in detail above.

However, finding a partner who’s cool with you letting one out every once in a while, no harm no foul, is a beautiful thing. Here’s a list of a few characteristics to look for and how to screen for them.

• Inability to smell. This could be a permanent medical issue, or just heightened congestion at night. Find something pleasurable-smelling and say, “Oh, this fresh-ground coffee is delightful, don’t you agree?” If they answer with, “I can’t smell anything,” then you’re good to go. On the second front, if your partner blows his or her nose frequently at night, feel free to release your exhaust with impunity.
• Gastrointestinal issues. You don’t think farting is all that gross. After all, you’re reading this blog, and you don’t think of yourself as gross, do you? If you find a partner who also suffers from toots, it’s a point of bonding, rather than an obstacle.
• A childish sense of humor. Maybe you share a sense of humor with your partner, maybe you don’t. There are other things that connect people, like a bangin’ sex life or religious beliefs. Anyway, if your partner loves fart jokes, your hot air balloon of a gut will be a source of lifelong pleasure.
• A deeper connection of any sort. Love is a beautiful thing. Some love is blind, other types can’t seem to smell. In most cases, emotional bonds between people turn otherwise negative traits into endearing sidenotes. An accidentally gassy night, once in a while, is merely a cause to shrug and move on.

Not farting in bed is possible

Not farting in bed isn’t possible. You spend about one-third of your life sleeping or trying to sleep. Skilled lovers will spend another third of their life in the act of sexual intercourse or foreplay of some variety. That’s two thirds of your life you could be spending in bed. It’s just not reasonable to hold in farts that whole time.

However, by obscuring the noise and smell of your farts, you can appear to be a tranquil sleeper with good gut health to those around you. May you break wind in comfort and peace.

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