A girlfriend phoned me in tears last week. ‘I’m in LOVE,’ she sobbed. ‘I know, honey. Awful, isn’t it?’ I comforted.

‘No, you don’t understand,’ she sniffed.

‘I do, I get it.’ ‘No!’ she exclaimed through the sobs. ‘I’m in love but… he smells!’ Well. I’d never heard that one before.

Apparently, he has body odour. Underarm sweat patches. The works.

He’s into non-toxic cosmetics, she elaborated. And I guess he uses one of those underarm crystal things. But he needs something industrial.

She didn’t know what to do. How do you tell someone they smell, without offending them? Well, you don’t. You either risk offending them, or you suffer the stench. Or you defriend them and never tell them the reason why. The thing is that my friend and the new love of her life have made a pact to be honest about everything, by his suggestion.

Though I bet he hadn’t figured his lack of personal hygiene into the honesty equation.

Ah, relationships. There’s always something. Some of us find the perfect partner only to find him hopelessly obsessed with football or Grand Theft Auto. Others have to endure an overly protective or meddling mother-in-law. And some of them have BO.

My friend asked if she should hint about his odour. Hint? I’m not sure exactly what she had in mind, but if a guy doesn’t know that he has perpetual BO, he’s probably not going to pick up on the subtleties of sniffing. She laboriously worked through the various ways she could let him know he smelled without directly telling him that he smelled.

These included – but are not restricted to – buying him new deodorant and cologne, gently sniffing near his shoulder and casually asking what deodorant he wears or sharing a shower with him and scrubbing hard under his arms until the penny dropped.

In the end I advised telling him directly, since any other attempt would result in ambiguity or – if he’s astute enough – hurt feelings that she didn’t trust him enough to be able to handle the truth.

Fast forward three days and she called again. It did not go well. Apparently, she had completely forgotten the carefully worked script and instead garbled about her very sensitive nose and his hippy ways. He got quite huffy.

She’s now worried that she’s blown the whole thing.

But as I told her, the smell was a deal breaker anyway – either she said something and risked offending him but ultimately fixed the problem, or didn’t tell him but had to break up with him anyway.

In matters of the heart – and nose – it’s always better to speak the truth. Besides, if I smelled, I’d want someone to tell me so I could immediately remedy it… wouldn’t you?

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