I am currently with a guy who doesn’t take his personal hygiene seriously. We have been dating for a year now and it’s been a long-distance relationship throughout. We try to keep things fresh so no matter what happens, we meet once every month.

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When we are apart, we are fine. The problems only come up when we are together. This man has both mouth and body odour. I am not one of those women who like to endure things for the sake of love. The moment I noticed something was off, I spoke to him about it. He promised he would bathe regularly and brush his teeth twice a day. So far he remains the same. I have gone ahead to complain several times but he is who he is.

The kind of odour that comes out of his mouth when he speaks is so unbearable that I sometimes want to vomit when he talks to me in close proximity. His teeth are full of plaque. I am not exaggerating when I say you can find last year’s food particles sitting comfortably on his teeth and gums. Brushing his teeth is always a problem for him. He can go a full week without brushing. If I ask he would tell me, “My toothpaste is finished,” or “I can’t find my brush.”

When it comes to bathing, he only showers in the mornings. Not even a proper bath with a sponge and soap. Sometimes it’s soap and water. Other times, it’s just water. At night, forget bathing. Water doesn’t touch his skin. Weekends are the worst. After showering on Friday morning, he won’t bathe again until Monday morning.

His lifestyle has made it such that his sheets and pillow cases stink so badly. Sometimes when I enter his room, it smells like he is hiding a dead rat in his bed. Don’t even get me started on his towel. I don’t know the original colour he bought it in. It’s that bad. All his office shirts have also changed colour. The white ones have become yellow or brown.

Cockroaches roam freely in his dwelling place. You would think they are roommates. Just as he does not wash his clothes, he does not wash his dishes. He leaves dirty bowls and plates anywhere he sits and eats.

Basically, everything around Mahmoud stinks. I don’t know what to do about this situation again.

I confided in his mother. She said it’s not a big deal so I should pray for him to change. As for his aunt, she reached out to me and said that if it’s too much for me to bear I should leave him. She said his behaviour is all his mother’s fault. She didn’t bath Mahmoud and his siblings regularly when they were kids. Her excuse was that things were hard so she couldn’t waste soap or toothpaste on them. After all, they would still play and get dirty.

Truth be told, Mahmoud’s mother isn’t clean. His aunt said their dad abandoned them because of too much dirt from their mother.

I love him. I don’t want his poor hygiene to be the reason I leave him. That’s why I am trying to help him. I always buy him nice deodorants, toothbrushes, colognes, and mouthwash. The problem is, he refuses to accept help. He never uses the stuff I buy for him. It’s either, “I don’t like the smell of the deodorant,” or “This toothpaste is burning my mouth.”

What he doesn’t know is that he has become a laughing stock at his workplace. Nobody wants to associate themselves with him. They’ve even given him a nickname that he is not aware of. I know all this because I have a friend where he works. From what she has told me, my man has no friends. His colleagues only talk to him when it’s about work. They leave him out of everything else outside work. I feel sad on his behalf.

Recently, something happened that really pained me. I was with him one Saturday morning when he had to go and play football. We were supposed to go to town and buy something after that so I had to go to the game with him.

Before we left home, I tried to talk him out of going, considering how smelly he would get after sweating. He didn’t listen to me. He even started to get angry when I pushed too hard.

After the game, he smelled horrible. I told him to return home and freshen up but he refused so we went to town as planned. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get what we were looking for. We had to pick a public transport to go somewhere else. Immediately we stopped a car by the roadside and entered, his scent took over the vehicle. I felt uncomfortable as people turned to look at us.

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Bra mate (the conductor) made it worse by shouting, “Who entered the car with a male goat?”

Everyone in the trotro started laughing. I was so shy. I had to convince him that we should alight. I said I was car sick. If not, he wouldn’t have gotten down.

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When we got home I sat him down and used the trotro incident to try and make him reason with me. You should see this guy crying as if I had beaten him. According to him, he didn’t grow up with luxuries like looking tidy, smelling good, and maintaining good personal hygiene. I felt he was spewing a bunch of nonsense. So I gave him a piece of my mind.

I am done pampering him. I’m waiting to see if he will change. If he continues with his lifestyle, I will take his aunt’s advice and leave him. I hope that won’t make me a bad person.

—Sadia

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