Quiet nights spent in front of the computer tend to summon forth pangs of loneliness, even if you're involved. In fact, having someone and being apart from them is often worse than not having one at all. After a night spent alone, its nice to go to bed, and have the comforting scent of your partner deeply ingrained in the pillows, the sheets and the blankets.

I never understood the appeal of the scent of your partner, well, I never had one.

A friend flew over to England for a few months to be with the other half of his family, he left behind his favourite and most worn rugby shirt for his girlfriend... She wore it for at least a month without washing it. To me it seemed like a smelly, useless and quite pathetic act, but I understand now...

The familiar, comforting scent that you and your partner shares it something unique to each couple. Surely it shares the same components, bodily fluids and the like, but as with each person these are different, such is this scent yours and yours alone.

The scent is a reminder of warm embraces, of tender loving and of spilt tears, it serves to fortify against loneliness and helps us remember that there is a person out there thinking of us...

In short:
A) It is a scent.
B) It is comforting.
C) It is good.

I learned in my high school psychology class that the sense of smell is the sense that is most closely linked with memory. As an experiment, we were given some vials of different smelling substances, and asked to write descriptions of how they smelled (before being told the information above). Sure enough, most of the descriptions written down were based on memories ("smells like grandma's kitchen", "smells like the dentist's", etc).

The point is, keeping an article of clothing that has belonged to a loved one and still carries their scent can be more effective and powerful than simply taking along a picture of them.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.