Come Here...I Want to Smell You!

A hug. A kiss. A cuddle before bed.

Whether you're conscious of it or not, the way your lover smells plays a large roll in your every day interactions with them. More so than anyone else, your lover is allowed to pass in and out of your invisible personal space barriers almost as if they didn't exist. (Sometimes to a very annoying degree!) This close proximity forces you to breathe in their scent, be it natural/perfumed, good/bad, and as a result, your brain makes primitive judgments about your overall sexual compatibility.

In recent years perfumes/colognes claiming to contain human sexual pheromones have become common place on the market. The manufacturers of these scents say that the pheromones will attract lovers to the wearer without any extra effort. For example, all a woman would have to do is walk by and smell your ultra-sexy, pheromone-enhanced masculine scent and she would fall adoringly at your feet. Now although effects of this magnitude are not only statistically improbable, but realistically ridiculous, there is something to be said about the way a potential lover smells.

Studies have shown that women in particular use scent as part of their mate selection criteria (maybe because women have a better sense of smell than do men). One study led by Chris Wedekind at the University of Bern in Switzerland found that women were most attracted to men who had dissimilar MHC profiles than their own.

"A segment of our DNA called the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) codes for some of these disease-detecting structures, which function as the immune systems eyes. When a disease is recognized, the immune system's teeth--the killer T cells--are alerted, and they swarm the intruders, smothering them with destructive enzymes. Unlike many genes, which have one or two alternative versions (like the genes that code for attached or unattached ear lobes), MHC genes have dozens of alternatives. And unlike earlobe genes, in which the version inherited from one parent dominates so that the version inherited from the other parent is not expressed, MHC genes are "co-dominant." This means that if a lab mouse inherits a version of an MHC gene for resistance to Disease A from its mother and a version lending resistance to Disease B from its father, that mouse will be able to resist both diseases." (Furlow, 1996)

Right...What does this mean exactly?! It means that women picked the men whose immune system profiles were the least like their own. If she were to have a child with the men she thought smelled the best, then that child would have the best of both immune systems, essentially making it stronger than both parents. This is how mice select their partners...and it seems human women do the same thing.

So there is no elite group of Good Smelling Men. There will always be some women who like a particular man's smell and some who don't.

But once you've found that partner with the perfect smell...When is the best time to give them a loving sniff? Here are the results of last week's poll:

During Sex - 26% (No surprise there!)
Just Before Sex - 21%
After a Shower - 21%
After Sex - 16%
When You Wake Up - 11%
After a Work Out - 5%

Just a thought - If you think your partner smells their best right after a shower, you might want to ask yourself why. This is typically when they smell least like their natural selves...and based on the evidence above, you might be sleeping with the wrong person!

Thanks for voting!

Source: Article Title: The Smell of Love: How Women Rate the Sexiness and Pleasantness of a Man's Body Odor Hinges on How Much of Their Genetic Profile Is Shared. Contributors: F. Bryant Furlow - author. Magazine Title: Psychology Today. Volume: 29. Issue: 2. Publication Date: March-April 1996. Page Number: 38+. COPYRIGHT 1996 Sussex Publishers, Inc.; COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group.