Help! My Husband Stopped Using Soap Five Years Ago. You Can Imagine How That’s Going.

It’s Advice Week! In On Second Thought, we’ll revisit questions from the archives and dig into how much has changed since Slate began giving advice in 1997—and how much hasn’t. Read all stories here.

This is an excerpt from the Dear Prudence podcast. This week, writer Cheryl Strayed joined Jenée Desmond-Harris to answer your questions. You can listen to the rest of the episode here.

Dear Prudence,

My wonderful husband of 15 years stopped using soap about five years ago. I am all for body autonomy, but this is seriously impacting my ability to get close to him. I used to love the way he smelled and would bury my nose in his neck. It was one of the things that really turned me on about him, but about four to five years ago, he stopped using soap after reading something about how it can disrupt a body’s natural microbiome or something to that effect. The result is that his skin now feels a bit oily and he constantly smells of low-grade body odor. It’s only noticeable when you get really close to him, but I’m the person that gets close to him. He showers every day and is a generally clean person, but I’m starting to get grossed out and don’t enjoy our skin-on-skin contact anymore. I love him more than anything and do not want to hurt his feelings, but I would really like him to use soap again. Bare minimum, wash his armpits. Any suggestions?

—Missing His Scent

Jenée Desmond-Harris: So stinky spouse questions come up pretty regularly for me. I wouldn’t say they’re a huge theme, but this is really familiar to me. A lot of people think their spouse stinks, and I always say when I get these, it’s so interesting because I know there are relationships in which someone could say, “Oh my God, you stink. The no soap thing isn’t working. Take a shower.” And there are relationships in which that would feel impossible and it would feel so mean and cause someone to spiral and feel so hurt. The letter writer would not have written to us if she felt like she could say, “Please bring the soap back. I’m getting an odor. Can you just handle that?” So it’s obviously a very sensitive issue, right?

Cheryl Strayed: Yes. And I think she absolutely has to do that. I think she has to say, not, “You stink,” but “Hey, I understand your concerns about soap, but I’ve just noticed that since you stopped using soap, there’s this odor that’s just not pleasant. How about we explore other things that you can do [like] more natural soap?” I mean, there’s certainly lots of natural soap out there that can be used. Here’s the thing about that. I hear what you’re saying and I thought the same thing. My relationship is one of those where you can say to the person, “I love you, but you stink.”

And, in fact, I want to say Jenee, I feel like—and I laughed with my husband when I read this—I actually have firsthand experience with this thing. My husband, Brian, wonderful, beautiful man who I’ve been with for hundreds of years now, who I just adore and love, and he is just the sexiest, most beautiful human on the earth. He, every once in a while, has these natural hygiene ideas. One of them was when he went through this little phase where he just thought deodorant was toxic. And so he showers a lot, but he was experimenting with not using deodorant. And I pretty quickly detected this and inquired about it, and he shared this toxic ideology with me. I was like, listen, I don’t care. I don’t care if it shaves 10 years off of our lives. You’ve got to use deodorant.

Jenée: Every online conversation I’ve read about natural deodorants, which I’ve explored, kind of ends with people saying, well, you just have to get used to the way normally you smell as a human. It’s natural.

Cheryl: No. And I say this with real concern for the letter writer’s relationship because the minute you start using those words like grossed out and not enjoying skin-on-skin contact, when you start to be repulsed by your lover, that’s doom. That spells doom to me. You could be right that this relationship is very sensitive, and it’ll be devastating to the husband to hear the no-soap thing isn’t working. It could also just be that the letter writer is very considerate and sensitive and afraid of hurting somebody’s feelings. I think that the rule for me is when you do have to say something honest and hard to somebody and you are afraid of hurting their feelings—which is if I have to say something hard and honest, I’m always concerned about people’s feelings—there is a way to be kind and honest at the same time.

The letter writer can say, “I love you. You are the most wonderful person, and I couldn’t be happier with you as my partner. And I’m just feeling like your body odor is turning me away from you, and I don’t like it. I love you, but I don’t like it.” And sort of take it outside the, it’s not personal. It would be one thing if this person had a health condition that they couldn’t change or help. It would be like letter writer, you have to live with that and accept it or not. But in this case, it is a choice that the partner made to not use soap. It is a choice that has consequences. And one of the consequences is his partner is repulsed by him. So I think that I would want to know if I did something that repulsed my partner.

Jenée: Have the conversation, save yourself, save your nose. Your husband and his biome will survive.

Cheryl: I always think about this. What’s the universal unsolicited advice I’d give to everyone? This is something I sometimes have people do when I teach writing workshops: Write down the one sentence that you’re not allowed to say or say out loud the one sentence that you believe you’re not allowed to say. And it’s just the truth. It’s just the truth about something you want or the way you feel about something. And I think that that is the way we grow and evolve and make our relationship stronger and better and the way we grow our own lives as well. Being brave enough to say the one true thing. And obviously, sometimes that one true thing is very deep. It’s like, I want to be a writer instead of an attorney, or whatever. And other times it’s like, I love you, but your body odor is turning me away from you. It sounds silly, but it’s a radical and necessary truth to share.

Jenée: Absolutely.

You can listen to the rest of this week’s Dear Prudence episode here.

I suffer from low blood sugar so I keep a variety of snacks on me. My co-worker, “Jane,” is a lovely person. Her daughter, “Nora,” is not. Jane can’t drive so Nora picks her up after picking up her kids from school. I gave one of the kids a snack once; now Nora expects me to feed them every time they are here!