“Hey John” Advice Column – Volume 5

Hey John,

I have a problem with my husband. He is a good guy, works, doesn’t drink too much, but I don’t like his smell. He doesn’t have b.o. or anything, and his hygiene is good. But when I lay in his arms at night, his skin smells weird to me. It’s not terrible, but it’s not pleasant. He thinks I am rejecting him, but I love him. I don’t want to sleep in separate beds. Any ideas about what to do?

Eliminating the possibility of olfactory hallucinations (quite unlikely), it is possible you have an undiscovered superpower: your sniffer. Most people with super smell abilities tell me the things they can’t stand to smell. One fella years ago told me when he was in the grocery store, he could “smell the nasty smell of microwave popcorn three aisles  away”! Super-sniffers can tell you what they don’t like, but often times not their favorite smells.  

I think it’s potentially important you work on further developing your olfactory abilities. When people are only aware of smells they don’t like, they become hyper sensitive to them. As they concentrate on “discovering” scents that appeal to them, often times they no longer are as acutely aware of only unpleasant smells that surround us.

Not many people are blessed with this ability. In order to increase your abilities, start paying attention to smells you like. If you don’t create a scene doing it, walk down the aisle in the store that has the marshmallows, grab a bag, give it a light squeeze or two and take in a good gentle sniff. Open the coffee in the morning and breathe very gently. You detect good smelling stuff in a restaurant? See if you can identify the smells. You are re-training your olfactory abilities for not just  smelling funky stuff.

Secondly, if your husband is still smelling a little off, consider getting him some great scented soaps, or even colognes that you both shopped for together. Use colognes very lightly, especially since you have such a sensitive sense of smell. It might be nice for the both of you. 

On a final note: A number of years ago I was working with a college girl who had been successful  at developing her acute sense of smell. When she returned from a skiing trip, she told me, “when we got off of the last lift, it was super cold, and there no air movement. I was overwhelmed by the magnificent smell. When I yelled out to my group, ‘it smells so good up here!’, they all looked at me like I was crazy. I was the only one who could smell it. It was amazing.”  Be amazed with your gift.

Hey John,

My four year old son is the product of a violent marriage. I was beaten up by my husband a lot. After ten years I finally got up enough nerve to leave him. My son was 2 1/2 at the time. Now I am with another man, and my son is yells at me and hits me on the leg. I feel like a failure as a mother, because he probably saw me getting hit, and now is copying his father. I don’t want to spank him, because he’s already seen too  much hitting. I don’t know what to do except be sad because it’s my fault.

You are doing two common things: you are blaming the victim (you, the recipient of a violent “man”), and, at the risk of sounding a little sexist, you are doing the female thing- feeling too guilty. As a gender rule, men often times don’t feel much guilt, and women feel too much of it. How much behavior a child learns at the age of two is a debatable topic. And, in my opinion, it really doesn’t matter. The issue at hand is that you have a four year old who behaves improperly when angry. What to do about it is far more important than what caused it (if we will ever really know). You don’t say how you respond to his hitting except to be sad. So let’s innumerate a few steps:

1. As you are about to change the rules of the game, you need to (privately) announce it to him ahead of time. Tell him hitting when angry is no longer acceptable. You can phrase it however you wish, but perhaps something rather general like: “if you hit Mommy again, you will be in trouble”.

2. Know that this “threat” is meaningless until you get to teach him. Don’t hope that your warning will stop the behavior (it won’t); rather hope he messes up sooner than later so you can start teaching him.

3. When it happens, take him to a private place such as your room, sit on the bed and remind him hitting is not accepted. As important (but a little more difficult) is instructing him how he shouldhave handled it. Something like, “when you didn’t get another cookie, you could have said, ‘Mommy, I’m really hungry. I promise to eat all my supper if you would give me just one more’. Hitting Mommy didn’t get you the cookie, and got you in trouble”. With further instances of inappropriate expressions of anger, you can get creative in the “punishments”. Examples might be: having to follow you around the house for twenty minutes, sitting on his bed with books for fifteen minutes, sitting on the couch (with no TV, obviously) for a short period of time, reducing tablet play from thirty minutes to fifteen, etc.

4. Finally, know you have to do this probably twenty times before you get any results. This is not a one-shot deal. Besides teaching your son how to act when he’s angry may foster in him an eventual respect for women. This will affect practically every facet of his future. Our job as a parent is only partially as a disciplinarian. Our role as a teacher is our main purpose as a good mother or father.

You can be sad, but don’t stop being a Mother. You are in a blessed position to help a little boy eventually turn into a good man. Work hard.