Marriage and olfactory psychology

[AbdesSalaam Attar, Perfumer Composer]

Yesterday, following the newsletter on human pheromones a lawyer has called me.
He is now retired and he was specialized in divorces.
He has been impressed by the study because somehow it explained in a new light his life experience about couple separations. In fact, one of the common arguments told by the people seeking divorce is that they do not bear anymore the smell of the other at the moment of the sexual act.
This has interested me a lot because it brought back to my mind the case of a once visiting customer I received.
He explained me how the sense of smell played a big role in his life, and he loved my perfumes. He was a man in his fifties and he had found a new life with a new woman. Among the reasons he gave me for the separation with his wife, one seemed to me particularly crude and I dismissed it cutting short the conversation. He was saying that since a long time he had not been able to have intimate rapport with his ex wife because of the nauseating smell she produced at the time of the rapport. I found the affirmation of a rather bad taste and did not inquire further on the subject but now, after the call of the retired lawyer, I am inclined to think that this phenomenon might be rather widespread and I would like to understand it better.
There are a number of possible causes:

1. The smell was always there but the other was not smelling it…
• Because of a specific anosmy (incapacity to smell particular pheromones) that later disappeared
• the other is smelling it now because of a psychological change
• the other is smelling it now because of a hormonal change

2. The smell of the partner has indeed changed
• because of a hormonal change
• because of a change in the diet or in the metabolizing it

It would be interesting to understand in what measure this phenomenon concerns men and women
If it can be linked to the presence or absence of children in the couple
If the age of the partners and the length of the marriage are common factors

These questions are just for a start, I would like to search the archives of the lawyer, I shall anyway ask him more information when I speak with him again.

AbdesSalaam Attar
Compositore Profumiere

Scritto Da – Salaam Attar il 10 Agosto 2006 alle ore 12:03:54

[AbdesSalaam Attar, Perfumer Composer]

One of the first axioms of olfactory marketing is: “The psychological effect of a smell depends in great part from the context in which it is smelled”.
For instance the smell of the beloved’s favorite perfume on the pillow while he (or she) is away traveling wakes up tender an melancholic emotions.
The same perfume smelled the same day by the same person at the bar in his coffee because the bar tender had it on his hands completely ruins the most Italian of pleasures and provokes a feeling of disgust (see the face of the person), because in that context it gives the impression that the cup was not properly washed and that the hygiene is lacking in that place.
It is possible that in the context of a failed marriage, the physical smell of the partner with whom exists a state of daily opposition and animosity becomes hateful.

AbdesSalaam Attar
Compositore Profumiere

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