#77: On bad cologne, body image, & nostalgia for old relationships
This email is for paying subscribers of Maybe Baby. This is my monthly Q&A column, Dear Baby, in which I answer 3(ish) reader questions. To view this in a web browser, click on the title above. To see my full advice archive, click here.
Hey gargoyles,
Happy Halloween! My free costume idea is Gerald Stratford, famed “retired fisherman and gardener heavy into growing big veg.” All you need is overalls and/or suspenders and any large vegetable you can get your hands on. I dressed up as him last night and spent most of the night explaining my costume because no one got it and also the massive leeks I carried around made people wonder who had BO. Feel free to steal cheers.
Welcome back to Dear Baby, my monthly Q&A column. Today I’ll be answering four questions:
I don’t like my partner’s cologne, which they wear proudly and liberally. Also, I bought them the scent as a gift. What do I do?! And any other tips for disliking something your partner likes?
When it comes to body-image, dysmorphia, weight gain, and aging, what I know and believe intellectually doesn't correlate with how I feel about myself. How do I get out of this loop?
I’ve been thinking about my ex for two years. Does that mean something?
What do you think of people who follow you? Do you ever stalk our profiles? Are you ever surprised? Do you think we’re prosaic?
On Dear Danny this week, we’ll discuss the above along with questions about moving in with a partner, infidelity, and what to do about a careless friend. We’re actually chatting this afternoon so if you’d like to throw a question into the ring, hit us up in the comments before 4 p.m. EST!
(Thoroughly appreciated the Danny debate under our last ep btw.)
1. On hating your partner’s scent
“For Christmas 2 years ago, I gifted my husband (then boyfriend) a cologne. They love it and aren’t afraid to swim in it when we leave the house. Unfortunately, in the past two years there hasn’t been much need to go out and wear cologne. Double unfortunately, I have grown to dislike the scent… a lot. I don’t want to say anything or dull their swagger, it’s so cute when they are feeling so confident and spray like 6 huge plums of smoke and dance through. But also… at some point this scent has got to go. Micro level: What should I do here? I’m assuming just replace it this Christmas with a new cologne we shop for together? Macro level: Advice on how to allow your partner to enjoy things, and tastes, and smells (etc) you don’t enjoy? Especially things you did… but don’t any longer. How to not say to your lover, ‘my opinion has changed now so catch up to me!’”
In my mind this is the perfect question: it’s funny, it’s low-stakes, and it ultimately gets at a fundamental aspect of life and love that is seldom discussed. I actually find this predicament so funny that my first instinct is to suggest you make a big joke of it. How ridiculous and also poetic is it to buy someone a gift, delight in their enjoyment of it, and then slowly come to hate the gift and resent their enjoyment of it? It’s like a Shakespeare play! It also reminds me of this Kurt Vonnegut line: “The truth is, we know so little about life, we don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” Your partner loves the cologne: good news or bad news?
If there’s a chance you both can find the humor in this, it seems the best route to me. Not only because it opens up a path to a solution (new scent), but it actually gives you room to admit your feelings versus quietly stew or bury them in some kind of scent-based long-con. In my experience, it’s these kinds of strange and inevitable relationship scenarios that enable you to really get to know yourself and your partner. This is why people in long-term relationships tend to develop their own idiosyncratic way of understanding each other: After a while you have no choice but to be truest yourself, and if you can manage to keep loving each other after that, your relationship takes on a new, inimitable shape.
Here’s the scenario I’m imagining, in detail: