Beyond Pheromones: The Science of Scent and Sex
From alluring aromas to seductive smells, science helps us understand the role of scent in our sex lives
“Her eyes were large, black, and full of fire; her mouth extremely small and ornamented by the finest teeth imaginable, she had a narrow, supple tongue, of the loveliest pink, and her breath was sweeter still than the scent of a rose.” —Marquis de Sade; 120 Days of Sodom.
Marquis de Sade had an uncanny ability to describe the seemingly bizarre paradoxes enmeshed in the curious phenomenon of human desire.
Desire is strange.
It transforms us. It alters the way we see the world.
In the blink of an eye, desire coverts the characterless into the extraordinaire. Desire mutates the raunchiest aspects of our feeble humanity into the delectable, awe-inspiring objects calling out to our innermost primeval impulses. Desire has a mysterious way of rendering someone’s boringly human parts into a resplendently sacred whole for us to appreciate.
But what makes desire happen in the first place?
The Elements of Desire
Erotic desire is the product of countless forces coming together. History, chemistry, biology, and anatomy, all converge to produce a state of erotic consciousness.
Think about that for a moment.
The stars aligned just right for you to feel desire for someone else.
The sex you have is the product of elaborate algorithms that incorporate remarkably complex things, such as our genetics, our individual histories, and even our societies.
But desire has to start somewhere. And it starts with just a few powerful tools called the human senses.
One indispensable tool for constructing desire is the sense of smell. It plays a far greater role in your attraction than we like to give it credit for.
We all know that someone’s visual features play a role in whether we’ll be attracted to them or not. It’s part of our biology. With a quick glance, we’re perpetually summing people up, determining their potential compatibility with us in the bedroom.
This happens in a fraction of a second.
It’s so natural, that you don’t even notice you’re doing it.
But your ability to smell a great sex partner is amazingly more fine-tuned.
The Scent of Eroticism
Your sense of smell is one of the oldest senses. Long before our animal ancestors developed sight, they smelled their way around. Because of this curious feature, it’s the most refined sense there is. The brain has hundreds of dedicated receptors for smelling different things. Each receptor is created by its own gene.
Yes, if someone is born without a certain gene, they won’t be able to smell its corresponding smell.
Thanks to these receptors, the human brain can identify more than one trillion different smells.
To put that in context, your eye can see 3 million different colors and your ears can hear a little under 500,000 different tones of varying frequency and loudness. Your nose takes in more information than your eyes and ears combined. This information has a powerful impact on our feelings and behaviors.