Article from Men’s Health magazine.
An innocent question from one guy’s wife led to thousands of men explaining themselves.
By Philip Ellis
An innocent question posed on Reddit garnered more than 5,000 replies yesterday, and also poked holes in the popular myth that all guys pee standing up.
The post, which read “My husband pees while sitting down- how common is that?” immediately received a slew of responses, with commenters sharing insights into why some guys might prefer to take a seat before breaking the seal.
“If his piss forks, which some men do, then he probably does it to avoid a mess,” one commenter suggested, with others bringing up the point that urine can often fork after sex, due to dried semen in the urethra.
The truth is, there are a number of reasons why men might opt to sit down—and research suggests that more guys do it than might be expected.
Data—admittedly, data from 2007, but hey, this isn’t studied too often—shows that 42 percent of married men sit down to urinate, presumably due to spousal pressure. “Show me an Aimer who says he never misses the toilet and I’ll show you a liar,” says Chris, who runs a blog with his wife Kim.
“Not only that, but even perfectly aimed streams are messy. They create a fine mist of piss that missed. Though it can be invisible to the naked eye, the nose can’t miss the smell. And it accumulates, creating sticky floors and yellow porcelain. Nobody wants to deal with this, and we shouldn’t have to.”
Those stats will almost certainly have risen in the intervening decade, thanks to the proliferation of smartphones and social media. Who among us hasn’t indulged in a scroll through Instagram while in the bathroom?
More importantly, there could even be health benefits: A 2014 study by Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands found that sitting down helps men with prostate problems such as lower urinary tract disease to urinate with greater force, as the sitting position encourages a “more favorable urodynamic profile.”
Of course, we also have to remember that for many older men, men with disabilities, and trans men, standing up to pee simply isn’t a given. In other words, there’s not just one way to have a number one.