Serious question about public restrooms.?

Here is a SERIOUS answer... You need PROFESSIONAL COUNSELING. This fear of yours is affecting your normal behavior and as such, interfering with LIFE. You NEED help to overcome this and you WON'T find it HERE!

BTW... this really is not an ETIQUETTE question... but thanks for asking!

Have a polite day.

Etiquette takes over where laws end.

Your roommates use the bathroom for that purpose, don't they? They can't object too much to your doing the same thing. That's life when you share living quarters. Think ahead to when you'll get married and have children. Unless you'll have a bathroom all your own, equipped with an exhaust fan, you'll have to confront this issue sooner or later.

Try the suggestion of lighting a match, perhaps even burning a scented candle while you're in there (flush the match down the toilet, and remember to extinguish the candle after you wash your hands). If there's a window, open it briefly. In any case, odors oxidize with the air in the bathroom after a few minutes.

Sometimes changes in diet can improve your digestion to where you'll have less gas and fewer strong odors. Start with drinking fewer carbonated beverages, and eating more "vitamin vegetables".

It's not healthy to frequently suppress the urge to have a BM. It can lead to chronic constipation, excess gas production, and other digestive complications. Figure out when your usual time of day will be, and try to be near an appropriate bathroom at that time. But if you need to use the one at home, so be it.

I hope you can succeed in overcoming this problem. You have a right to be human.

How are you allowing time between the urge and the off site location...which may NOT be available. Ever run into that sign when they are cleaning the bathrooms! Always ill-timed for someone.

Truthfully, you need to get over this because public bathrooms can be filthy and we all know there's a lot of germs.

Take matches with you into the bathroom Flush quickly, if you know what I mean. Decide to take a shower until the "air" clears!

Read that book "Everybody Poops" or whatever it is.

first of all. buy air freshener and run the faucet when you go - i'm sure you can't keep doing what you're doing forever

but since you asked. i like to go in the bathrooms of places like Barnes and Noble or department stores. the higher end department stores tend to have really nice bathrooms :)

Id go at the library or a new fast food reataurant.

get some adult diapers.