Women, Us Guys Love the Way You Smell

Yes, That Means All of You…

I just got done reading the work Men, Let Us Smell You, by Yael Wolfe here on Medium, and I felt the need to reply with a male perspective on such a fun topic, and I’ll toss in a couple of public confessions for kicks. In that story, she discusses her love and adoration for the male scent, the natural chemicals which pour out of the pores of men and into her nostrils that she always seems to find herself enamored with. I’ll speak for myself, here, and then theorize a bit about others, drawing from experiences and conversations, but I’ll start by saying that being able to smell a woman I’m romantic with has always been an important factor that drives me wild. I love your smells. I do. I know that there’s so much misinformation out there and so many women feel insecure about the way they smell, they feel they have to shower all the time (and being cleanly shaved all the time is another issue that we men don’t really care about) or else they become deeply self-conscious. I’m here to tell you, your fears aren’t the reality, though I know it’s not that easy to just shake some long-held beliefs overnight.

Even if no other men out there love the way you smell, I love the way you smell. In fact, I adore it. I consider it an absolutely necessary part of any romantic experience and I think that your significant other should too.

From the softness of the smell of your hair to damp fleshy fragrance of your neck, I love it all. Even the pungent and acidic tang of your armpits on a hot day is always a treat. The fact is, if I’m attracted to someone, I’m attracted to all of them and a few pheromones can go a very, very long way when it comes to making me infinitely more attracted to you.

Nice, complimentary and not-too-overpowering perfumes are great on occasion, but I’ve got to confess that whenever a woman covered up her natural scent to the point where it was unremarkable, it always felt like something was missing. I’ve had women insist on showering before I go down on them and I’d always respect their wishes and put their comfort first, but the oral sex which took place afterward was always unsatisfactory for me — a sex act I love to do just became a chore, which, hey, it happens, that’s alright, but I think that perhaps if women knew how more men felt about this, they might think about it differently. Going down on a freshly-showered woman just isn’t as enjoyable.

Public confession: it’s actually not uncommon for me to completely lose interest in sex because someone showered right before it, especially if they doused themselves with all sorts of scented products and artificial fragrances. Yes, I’ve turned women down because of this countless times.

This has happened a lot. Of course, I wasn’t going to act bitter or sulk about it, but I just wasn’t really all that interested in the sex anymore. Instances like these are things men never talk about because I honestly think we don’t want to hurt your feelings. While I might be a little on the extreme end, I prefer sex after a long, hard workday so I can appreciate the woman I’m with, in her most natural state; there’s something so Paleolithic and carnal about it that just reeks of no-nonsense and sweaty sex that drives me wild, unleashing a bit of a carnivore within.

I think the most we ever hear about how men feel about the scent of a woman, in general, comes from men who claim to be repulsed by the smell of a woman, especially the vagina, and I sincerely believe that 99.99% of these men are using this as a covert kind of misogyny. They don’t really hate the way you smell, they’re just saying that. I’ve noticed that most of these men will say this around other men or groups of people altogether, but when the clothes come off, they have zero complaints. I honestly think they just say this because they think it makes them sound selective, cultured, or “cool” when all I hear is that they’re perpetuating some weird, hand-me-down folklore version of sexism, a sly and covert way to try to “take her down a peg” that they likely heard from other men in their past. Like urban legends, racism and sexism, too, spread through unwitting or ignorant participants who just think they’re being edgy, cool, interesting, or funny when they repeat what they’ve heard. But they don't’ actually believe it.

I also tend to see this as a huge red fleg when talking with potential male friends. I’ve simply never met a guy who claimed to hate the way women naturally smell who didn’t end up having some serious control issues and who didn’t eventually espouse some seriously sexist rhetoric. Though a few may be out there, that hasn’t been my experience, at all.

How men really feel about it is we almost invariably love it. Some men have confessed to me in private that they could just get off just smelling a woman and I’m no exception to this rule. Sometimes I would smell a woman whom I’m attracted to and instantly, as if I’d just inhaled the most beautiful drug on the planet, was sent into a near-orgasmic ecstasy. Men all over share this experience and I’m sure plenty of men out there are with me, here, when I say that we simply can’t get enough of your natural scents.

I’ve met many men who swear that they can’t stand the smell of women, and those who are very adamant about it, usually covertly use telling women that they “need to take a bath” and other such demands as a means of asserting dominance or establishing control. I’ll never tell anyone what to do, but I can emphatically suggest that you stay away from these men. If he’s not attracted to you after a long hike on a hot summer day, his love comes with some conditions that are virtually impossible to meet. People sweat, people smell, people have fragrances which are as individual and unique as the rest of our bodies, and I can’t believe I have to say this, but that’s a very good thing.

I think we all love that feeling of being pressed closely up against our partners, clinging to them and wrapping our limbs around them as tightly as we can so that we can somehow absorb every inch of their skin against ours, maximizing the friction and resistance as we feel them push back against us, only to have it all topped off by a whiff of their hair. I love the way my girlfriend’s morning breath smells and I’m completely unapologetic in this fact. I tell her this with a pretty decent regularity. There’s something about the smell of her breath in general, as if I’m inhaling a part of her into myself, some unseen essence, and I think that most people can relate to this experience.

Yes, not liking the way our partner smells is very, very weird to me, and now that my dating years are behind me, I can confidently say what I wouldn’t hark on with my old partners, that you should be comfortable with yourself and your smells, if you can. I wouldn’t want to tell people what to do, so I waited until now to leave this in hopes that women might (hopefully) be able to ease a bit of their insecurity and find reassurance in the fact that us guys love the way you smell and the ones who don’t are probably lying.

It’s like people who don’t like animals, I don’t trust people who claim to not like the smell of their partners. So, be you, be free, and find someone who appreciates all of you, is my motto — and don’t settle for anything less.