I found out my boyfriend doesn’t use soap because I wanted to take a shower at his place. There was no body wash, so I asked. He said he’d run out. That seemed straightforward enough. Luckily, I had a little hotel sample forgotten in my duffel bag, finally justifying the space it took up.
Afterward, I remembered that he’d showered before me. I teased him about how he must smell if he’d just washed without soap. I expected some small explanation. Instead, he told me he didn’t really use it. As far as he was concerned, the water handled things.
We’re both 22. We’d been officially together for about four months, after another three months of seeing each other casually. I really liked him, and we both wanted to take the relationship seriously. I could imagine a future with this man. Until that conversation, I hadn’t realized the future might involve negotiating the presence of body wash.
Most of my overnight visits had ended with me leaving the next morning to get on with my day. I hadn’t showered there before, so I’d never had a reason to investigate what happened in his bathroom. Apparently, sharing a bed and understanding someone’s shower routine are two separate stages of getting to know them.
His place wasn’t spotless. Neither is mine. His room could be messy, dishes sometimes sat around, and he washed his sheets about once a month rather than my every other week. I’d noticed those differences and let them go. Nothing about his personal hygiene had struck me as alarming. I hadn’t noticed a bad smell, including when we were close.
So I asked a little more. This wasn’t just a temporary shortage of his usual product. No soap, no scrubbing. I asked about his private parts, and he was particularly careful to keep soap away from those. His feet weren’t getting any, either. Each answer made the original explanation about being out of body wash feel less like the relevant part of the conversation.
The awkward detail is that a friend who’d met him had said he smelled bad. I hadn’t smelled it myself. Now I was wondering whether he smelled occasionally and I’d missed it, or whether I’d simply become used to him. I still couldn’t honestly say I’d noticed something I hadn’t. I could only reconsider how much confidence to place in my own nose.
I don’t want to break up with him over this. I like him, and I still want to see where the relationship goes. But finding out his routine has changed how I feel about leaving it alone. It isn’t a dealbreaker for me right now; refusing to address it could make it one.
What I haven’t worked out is how to say that I need him to use soap without being mean or taking on the job of supervising him. I wanted a serious relationship with him. I hadn’t expected one of our early serious conversations to be about whether the shower needed anything besides water.
