Scent, Sex and Eros

All of us have at one time dreamed about another’s scent, imagining the emotions we will feel when we are connected with them. Hardly surprising, because the link between smell, memories, and emotions plays a huge part in the formation of human connections. While we may not have enough language regarding the sense of olfaction in our everyday lexicon, we most certainly communicate through it on a daily basis. Even a hint of smell that your nose might catch contains a universe of information – more than you may have ever imagined.

Cupid might have looked like a naked winged child with a bow and arrows, but what if I told you there’s a technical way of explaining the initial spark of a romantic relationship between two people? What if I told you that a huge part of the spark we feel has to do with the way we smell?

We’ve all been enchanted by the scent when pressing our nose into the nooks of our lover’s neck. Just as much we’ve been turned off by a foul stench invading our nostrils. The sense of smell in humans is one of our most basic instincts but we are unaware that we use it to communicate with each other. Scent’s communicative force has the power to bring complete strangers together as much as it can prevent two people from taking one step closer to each other.

Think about the last time you fell in love – how you couldn’t get enough of that feeling, taking in each breath as if it were your last. How their holding an item of their clothing to your nose could bring all those memories flooding back in an instant. This is all thanks to the chemosensory signals, also known as chemosignals, which provide information regarding human scent. The chemical substances we produce and release into the environment, which are then received by other human beings, are known as pheromones. Pheromonal reactions can range from babies leaning toward their mother’s breast drawn by the smell, a hunter catching the scent of body odors on the wind and knowing there is danger nearby, and of course, the sexual attraction between two individuals.

It’s as though our bodies send unconscious messages to trigger feelings. Those emotions, in turn, influence our behaviour or physiology. Pheromones are released, and then chemosignals, which ultimately attract attention and stimulate interaction, by tapping right into our subconscious, and therefore our deepest selves. Our scent has an aphrodisiac effect with potential to lead us to our destined partners. In a way, we could say that we each have a winged Cupid inside of us!

Human olfactory communication plays a critical function in the way we connect with people – in the subconscious process of identifying whether a potential mate embodies genetic qualities suited for our future offspring, and even in the process of sexual orientation. Our pheromones are at work to indirectly aid reproductive success by chemosignaling mate choice.

What if I told you that our natural biochemical signals could actually be enhanced? That we could take our own scent’s aphrodisiac effects to another level? That the right combination of natural aromas suited for your particular symphony of scents could create an ideal fragrance, just for you? This takes us to the world of bespoke perfumery – the ultimate way of expressing your scent, of tailoring a fragrance to your uniqueness.

The right type of bespoke perfume relies on your reactions, your pheromones. All you’d have to do is look within, into your own memories and emotions and set your inner Cupid free.

Stay tuned if you want to know more about this natural phenomenon.