Help! I farted during sex!

Hi Anna,

I was enjoying some post-lunch sex with my fairly new boyfriend (one of the perks of working from home!) and I think it was a little too close to our Chipotle meal because I did the most unladylike of things: I farted. There was only a brief pause on his part before business continued as usual, but I was mortified. Was he just being polite? What should I do if this happens again?

-Winded

Dear Winded,

One time I farted while trying to fake an orgasm with this guy from OkCupid who kept commanding me to "get there." Let that be a lesson to all your would-be orgasm-fakers out there: It could happen to you! Even though he sort of deserved it.

Long story short, there are two options for how to react when our bodies betray us during the most unfortunate of moments: You can either laugh at it, or just shut up and keep going. Ana, who lives in Avondale, agrees that it's best to dismiss it. She says, "I mean, unless the person is farting up a storm, I feel like it's best to ignore it."

Which is probably what your boyfriend did, Winded. Either that, or he mistook it for a queef, or perhaps an unruly mattress squawk (odds are higher if you purchased your bed from Craigslist). Either way, he didn't seem fazed by it, so you shouldn't either. In fact, you should be congratulating yourself. One survey found that women, on average, wait four weeks before they will even show their makeup-free faces to their boyfriends. And that's just goddamn eyeshadow! You are now leagues above all Average Women, and the wind beneath their cowardly wings! Plus, you and your boyfriend just got to Stage 3 intimacy levels without even trying.

Dave, who lives in The Island neighborhood, takes it one step further and looks at his gas as a source of pride. "My girlfriend has Euro parents so she is badass: No princess attitude. If I have to expel gas from either end she either laughs or is turned on by my beast-like belches. Which is good because my people make lots of gas."

Pridefulness aside, seriously, it's not a big deal. There are far worse things to be mortified about, such as why you're eating at Chipotle. I do find that laughter helps to remedy most situations like these, assuming something's not seriously askew with your digestive tract. Besides, farts are easy to laugh at because they are funny. It's a trumpety sound coming from your butt! In a Salon article by Tracy Clark-Flory, poignantly titled "Farting in Love," author Beth Lisick wrote that she jokes about farting with her husband by saying things like, "That sounded like it came from the '80s."

-Anna