Your Date Smells. Do You Ditch, Tell Them, Or Suffer In Silence?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So last Saturday I met this guy for coffee. We sat outside. I thought I smelled a faint whiff of b.o. but didn’t think much of it. Last night we watched a movie at my house. Dude definitely smells. I can’t believe it! Why the hell wouldn’t you take a shower and put on deodorant before a date? My god! It was very distracting, and even if I did find myself liking him, which I really don’t, his smell would definitely put the brakes on any romance that might occur. In fact, I really have no desire to see him again, much less next Saturday night which is Valentine’s Day, which he asked me out for.

Then I started wondering, what if I did like him in all the other ways? What would I do? I can’t imagine getting realclose to that smell, but also telling them would be horrible as well. How embarassing. So I concluded that even if I did like him, I’d still have to ditch him, because both alternatives are too horrible to contemplate.

I would ditch someone I liked over their bad smell. What would you do?

2

Honestly, it’s a dealbreaker. Either he didn’t care enough to clean up, which is a dealbreaker, or he just smells like that despite his best efforts, which is still a dealbreaker. Bummer, but we all have stuff we just can’t live with.

3

I would end the date as fast as possible. I’d probably check my phone, say that a family emergency has just arisen, and that I need to leave now. And, of course, I’d pay for whatever portion of the date that is mine.

4

If we had the most amazing connection in the universe and I was thinking I had found my ultimate soulmate, I’d probably mention the smell in an effort to save the relationship.

Anything short of “ultimate soulmate” and yeah, deal-breaker. There’s plenty of other fish in the sea that don’t smell like B.O.

5

OOOoooh, tough one. I have a friend that thinks that taking a shower is enough. I’ve never told him straight out, I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but when it’s come up about OTHER people doing that, I’ve made it clear that deodorant is NECESSARY! And, from what I gather (reading here on the dope), there are some who actually don’t believe in using it.

To answer your question, yeah, it would be a deal breaker. And I wouldn’t date them a third time. First date, wow, amazing, who doesn’t try and put their best foot forward then? But, I can see where maybe he ran late and didn’t have time to shower, change and use deodorant, maybe he worked late.

Second time? If I was starting to like the guy, I think I’d have to somehow ask what was up. To me, it shows a lack of respect for the person you’re with, whether you’re just starting to date, or you’re going on your 20th anniversary. If my husband came to bed smelling like that he’d find himself getting sent to the showers in a hurry!!!, and NO, no sleeping on my nice couch smelling like that either!!!

Maybe that’s why I’m still single, I don’t allow smellies? :smiley:

6

I’m generally a pretty stinky dude, although I certainly shower before hanging with a gal. I’m also a pretty goofy dude, too. If I really, really like a girl, I usually get a stomach ache when I’m hanging out with her, because I hold my farts in. If I just really like her, the goof will come out and I’ll fart on the first date with no abandon. It hasn’t stopped me from getting a second date yet, even when they smell really bad. I dunno, I guess I’m just kind of funny about it.

ETA: Great way to follow CanvasShoes’ last sentence! :smiley:

7

Yeah, what MsWhatsit said.

I dated a guy who came over to the house directly from work once. He worked at a rendering plant. He didn’t stay. Talk about oblivious.

8

Depends. <ba-dum tishhhh>

Seriously, though . . . was he wearing sweatpants? :smiley:

9

Hehe. Yeah, I know how to pick 'em!:smack:

10

If you don’t like him, why are you seeing him for a third date?

11

No, I’m not. He asked me out for next Saturday, and I told him I’d let him know. I’m going to tell him no.

The question is… should I tell him that he smells, so that he might have better luck in the future, or no?

12

If he asks why, then yes. If not, meh… his problem.

13

This is a tricky social question.
Some people will take the news badly.
Are you likely to run into him again?

I’ve only told one person they smelled. It was a long-standing friend and I did it as tactfully as possible. We’re still mates, so I must have done it right.

14

Depends on how stinky and what type of stink.

If it was a hot summer day and he had a slight sweaty smell that wasn’t too bad, I’d understand.

But if it was obviously from bad hygiene, then I’d ditch him very quickly and wouldn’t care how weak my excuse was.

I’ve had friends that tolerated stinky guys; I don’t know how they do it. I had a friend who said her boyfriend didn’t wear deodorant as a political statement and called it “reeking”. No joke. He said that Michael Stipe of REM did it as well. But damn, I couldn’t stand being down wind from him.

To answer the question, on a first date, I wouldn’t mention it. It’s not my job. That’s what the duty of the guy’s friends and family.

15

I am not really likely to run into him again. Maybe I’ll let him know via email and just keep my fingers crossed that I never see him again. Or maybe not.

16

It’s a deal-breaker for me. If you really liked him otherwise, I’d say let him know this was a problem for you, the lack of deodorant. But since this won’t make a difference—you don’t like him enough otherwise, I don’t think you owe him a “Teachable Moment”. Since you *don’t *click, why stress either of you out?

17

I would suffer in silence then never see him again. It’s something I don’t want to deal with and I am not invested in him enough to really go into it with him why.

**Cyn **- I thought of you the other day when I saw that Tshirt Hell is shutting down. Wonder if you would get all the overstock of your saying??

18

If it were an overall stink at never went away I would probably not ever see him again. If it seemed kind of hit or miss and I liked him a lot I would give it a shot.

My current boyfriend has diabetes and because of this his breath is occasionally not the greatest. Everything else about him is wonderful though so I deal with the occasional less than stellar breath because that isn’t worth losing the rest of him and it is a medical condition that he can’t help. If it were just a lack of hygeine though that would probably be different.

19

I think you should just ignore it , too, but I have another perspective to bring. Why not look at it, and speak of it, and think of it, as you-related rather than him-related?

By which I mean, you’re unusually sensitive to odors. I have no idea if you are or not, but framing it like that makes it much less a personal criticism of his hygiene than it is a self-assessment of your own peculiarities, and much easier to discuss with him, if you were so inclined (and I DON’T think this is something you need to discuss with him, under these circumstances.) Either way, you can’t take his smell and would need him to shower more frequently, apply much more deodorant, etc. to be comfortable in his company, but this would be a far more tactful way to raise the subject, and may even be more accurate.

FTR, I once had a girlfriend who told me that I stunk. I had a hard time with this, in part because my previous girlfriend would make fun of me for my insisting that I needed to shower sometimes before getting into bed with her. “I like the way you smell,” she would tell me. “You smell like a man.”

“Yeah, a man who’s just played basketball for two hours,” I would say. “I’ll be two minutes in the shower. Wait right here,” and she would, but only after a little eye-rolling, and sometims a muttered 'Finicky bastard." Sometimes I’d get back to her after that two-minute shower, and she would complain that now I smelled like a girl, so when my next GF complained that I smelled, with no real change in my hygiene habits, I got to see how totally subjective such judgments were. If my newer GF would have told me that it was her sensitivity, I still would have paid closer attention to my showering and deodorizing frequency but I wouldn’t have felt so fundamentally put down as when she told me that she thought that my hygiene was sub-standard.

Further FTR, I have broken up with women because they smelled funny, though I was looking to break up with them anyway, and that was just a bonus to me. The truth was that I didn;t care for the way they smelled, but why should I put it on them, when it could just have been that I like the way some women smell better than I like the way others smell? No judgment. I like what I like.

20

I would stop seeing him and not tell him why - as others have said, he’s a big boy - if he doesn’t know yet about basic hygiene, too bad for him. When I was online dating, I met one guy who had the furriest teeth I’ve ever seen - like he hadn’t brushed them in weeks. It might have easily been fixed by telling him he needs to brush his teeth regularly, but I was so grossed out that there was no chance of ever getting physical with him, and I didn’t think I should need to tell someone that they need to brush their teeth. I’d call that a basic incompatibility - I’m a normal person with normal hygiene, and he wasn’t.