I Noticed My Husband Smelling Like a Perfume I Don’t Own and He Said It Was From a Coworker’s Hug

Dana. 36. Dental receptionist. Scott is 38, he manages a property portfolio for a real estate company, a lot of apartment buildings mostly. We’ve been married 9 years. Our daughter Pippa is 6. We live in a town that’s fine, the kind of town where nothing happens and you either appreciate that or you don’t.

The perfume thing started on a Tuesday. He came in and I hugged him hello the way I always do and I smelled something that was not him and not me. I didn’t say anything. I told myself it could be anything. We work, we’re around people, smells transfer. Not everything means something.

The second Tuesday, same thing. I was making dinner and he came behind me and said something and I smelled it on his jacket and I turned around and looked at him for half a second longer than normal. He didn’t notice.

The third Tuesday I was ready. I leaned in when he came through the door specifically to check. Yep. Same one. Floral, a little sweet, specific in a way I can’t fully describe but specific enough that I recognized it three times.

I said, casually, had he had a good day. He said yeah, fine. I said he smelled nice. He said thanks. I said is that a new cologne. He said no, he thought maybe a coworker had gotten some spray or something on him. There’s a woman who hugs everyone at the office, he said. Very warm, friendly, just how she is.

Three weeks later, still on Tuesdays, there it was again.

I should say here that what logically follows is that I confronted Scott. What I actually did instead was spend about two hours one night trying to identify the perfume. I smelled his jacket very carefully while he was in the shower, which was its own low point. I had a rough description — floral, something underneath that was a little muskier, not super heavy. I went to the department store the following Saturday while Scott had Pippa and I bothered a sales person there for probably 45 minutes sniffing things until I found one that seemed right. It was $84.

I bought it.

Here is where my plan breaks down. The plan was: I put the bottle on the kitchen counter. Scott comes home. He sees it. His reaction — whether he says something, whether he goes pale, whether he asks where I got it — that tells me something. Confirmation through behavior.

He came home. He set down his bag. He walked through the kitchen. He absolutely saw the bottle because it was right in the middle of the counter in a place where bottles are not usually placed. He glanced at it. And then he said “hey, what are we doing for dinner.”

That’s it. That’s what happened.

I said I didn’t know, what did he want. He suggested the Thai place. We ordered from the Thai place. We ate dinner. I spent most of dinner trying to read his behavior and whether him not saying anything about the perfume meant he recognized it but was staying calm, or genuinely meant nothing.

I could not determine which. Bottle plan: inconclusive.

What actually solved it was stupider and less interesting than any plan I’d had. About three weeks after the bottle thing, Scott was at the gym early on a Saturday and I needed to call him about something with Pippa and he didn’t pick up. The gym is only 15 minutes from our house so I put Pippa in the car and drove over to tell him in person.

He was in the parking lot. With a woman I didn’t recognize. They were talking next to his car. Nothing physical happening, but the way he looked when he saw me pull in was the same look as: the thing that’s been going wrong for a while just became visible.

Her name is Theresa. She goes to the same gym. I found this out over the next week from the conversations that followed the parking lot moment.

The confrontation at home was loud. Not all confrontations are quiet and that one wasn’t. Pippa heard some of it from her room which I feel terrible about. Scott says it had only been a few months, Theresa’s side of things I don’t know and am not trying to find out.

We are in couples therapy. I go separately for myself too. My therapist is good and I like her. She asked me about the perfume plan and when I explained she did this short exhale that wasn’t quite a laugh but was close. I said yeah I know. She said there are more direct ways to find things out. I said yes I know that too.

Pippa asked me if the mommies and daddies have to stay together forever and I said not always but that means something different for every family. She thought about it and said okay and went back to her drawing. She’s 6. She processes things fast.

The perfume bottle is still on the kitchen counter. I forgot to move it.