Why Your Deodorant is Killing Your Love Life!

*pshhhhhhhhhh*

Here’s a post that should cause a wide variety of reactions. Yes, I’m telling you to ditch your deodorant! Why? Because our natural scent contains vital information on compatibility levels between friends, partners and even business colleagues. It’s true that us humans have among the least developed sense of smell compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, which could also be said of our sight and hearing compared to certain other species, but scent still plays an extremely important role in how we judge people and the subconscious profile we form of each person we meet.

As much as we like to think that we are rational, logical creatures living above the base animal desires and instincts of the other species on the planet, the fact is that other than our over developed neo cortex which allows us to “think” and choose, we are made up of basically the same parts as many of the other mammals on Earth. That is to say we rely heavily on our senses and our intuition when it comes to choosing partners, friends and work mates. Not only this but our bodily smell is altered by our emotional state! The scent we emit changes depending on whether we are anxious, scared, relaxed, aroused and so on, sending important signals to those around us.

For Science!

The Problem With Relationships Today: Is it any wonder that, in a large part, people’s romantic lives are such a shambles when we use excess makeup and fake tan to hide our face, we choose between a set number of lab-developed smells to mask our natural scent, we fill our cheeks and lips with botox and get boob and butt jobs and then to top it off we get drunk and find an equally smelly, drunk and “done up” person to go home and have bad sex with. Ah true love And now we’ve added online dating to the mix. Now we see a (usually misleading) picture a (biased) bio, and a list of factual information about the person. That’s fine except that most of our attraction to someone is based on the subtle tone and phrasing of their voice, their natural smile, their body language, their auras and energy fields and yes, their natural scent! Online might be a nice way to meet potential partners, but you really won’t know until you’ve met in person if it’s going to work.

We think we can read a check list and pick a partner based on similar taste in movies and music, or we stumble drunk and smelly (from deodorant) into the first other drunk and smelly person we find in a dark disco. I’m not saying you can’t find a great, compatible partner like that, I’m just saying it would be pretty random if you do. An over simplification of human relationships perhaps, but relationships should be simple, unfortunately though we’ve complicated them so much with all the confusing signals we send when we mask our true selves!

Why We Need To Smell Each Other: So much of our attraction to people, and our compatibility is actually encoded into the chemical makeup of our scent. Studies have been done in which a selection of women are asked to smell the dirty shirts of a number of men and gauge their level of attractiveness to each smell. It turns out that the women were most attracted to the smells of men who had dissimilar immune systems. This means that should these two get together and have kids, the children’s immune systems would be stronger due to the two parents having different types. But even if you’re not ready for kids or don’t want them at all, laying in your lovers arms and taking in their natural smell is an arousing and bonding experience. If you don’t like the smell of someone it’s a sure sign that other compatibility issues will arise sooner of later.

As I said earlier our mood effects the amount we sweat and the bacteria we produce which determines how we smell. This is a form of subconscious communication to those around us which gives us a better chance at communicating effectively. The scent doesn’t lie!

Deodorants and Antiperspirants Are Bad For You: The amount of crap that’s in deodorant and antiperspirant is well known and well documented. You’ve got your aluminium, penetration enhancers, triclosan (hormone disrupter), BHT (toxic to brain and nervous system) and so on. But apparently the marketing has worked flawlessly, we now believe our natural smell is so terrifyingly awful that it’s worth filling some of the most sensitive parts of your body with harmful chemicals on a daily basis. Now here’s the thing, I’m not on a crusade here, if you feel insecure about your smell and you absolutely must mask it, then check out some of the healthier, more natural ways to do that. There will be an article at the bottom which will give you some good alternatives. Deodorant and Antiperspirant probably won’t kill you, it has been linked to cancers including breast cancer, but it’s still fairly low risk. I don’t want to cause a panic, but at the same time it’s probably a good idea to have a think about what you are taking into your body. You probably wouldn’t drink a bottle of deodorant, and yet the skin absorbs it it into the bloodstream insuring that it does inter deep into your body anyway.

This is Not an Excuse to Be Dirty: If we don’t wash ourselves and change our clothes fairly regularly (depending on our levels of physical activity) we’re gonna smell, a lot. And yes we live in a society so it is important to respect the other members by staying clean and fresh and not forcing our week old, sweaty pits onto the people sitting next to us on the bus, that’s just bad manners. If you shower every day (or two) and change your clothes regularly you really shouldn’t be too smelly at all. You should smell like nothing to most people, unless you are getting very intimate with someone. Now I’m aware that there are those with BO, the clinical condition, but this is actually an anxiety problem. What I’d recommend is that you mask the smell (if you feel you need to) using a natural deodorant like lemon or baking soda, until you sort out the anxiety. By the way, below is the cause and affirmation for Body Odor if you want to give it shot:

Cause: Fear. Dislike of the self. Dislike of others.

Affirmation: I love and approve of myself. I am safe.

So stay clean, stay healthy, and let your natural scents bring the right people into your life!

*may not represent actual results

It Really Works: I haven’t sprayed deodorant on myself since I was about 17, that’s almost ten years ago. I also ask that those who are romantically interested in me refrain from using any deodorant or perfume around me. In that time I’ve had a number of lovers and partners. Was everything always awesome? Of course not, there’s always ups and downs, but the physical side, the animal attraction was always there. And if one thing is certain, whether it’s a short fling or a lifelong marriage, that intense love and attraction, as well as good communication, are the things that are going to make it work, and not a list of shared interests or intellectual rationalizations.

These days deodorants, male or female, smell pretty offensive to me, like an olfactory punch in the face. People look, smell and sound a certain way for a reason, when we mask these primal features with a generic filter we disrupt our ability to make clear judgments on who we like and who we dislike. Could I have gotten more “tail” if I’d sprayed myself and picked up drunk chicks from a night club? Certainly! But I trust my natural scent to repel those who are not right for me, and to attract those who are. This goes for intimate relationships, friendships and even work partners. And besides, isn’t it the case that it’s the quality of our interactions that’s important, and not the number?

In Conclusion: I hope this post has been interesting and informative. I don’t expect everyone to go the full monkey man like I do but it’s interesting to think about this sort of thing. With the barriers we place between each other through excess makeup, scent masking perfumes, plastic surgery, text messaging and dishonest game theory, is it really any wonder that relationships are consistently, and increasingly a topic of confusion and misery for so many? Whether you keep going with your deodorant or antiperspirant, decide to change to a healthier more natural alternative, or indeed if you give the whole thing up entirely I wish you all the best in your interactions with the other beings that people this world

Thanks for reading, take care!

Rohan.