Spring Scents That Will Drive Him Deep Into A Depressive Episode

All the seasons have their particular smells — cinnamon and spice in the fall, a fire burning in the fireplace in the winter — but there’s no time of year that smells better or more singular than spring. It’s a time of natural newness and rebirth, and it’s all in the air, from the freshly cut grass to the morning dew to a lover’s perfume. All of these and more smells are so evocative that they can trigger a flood of memories of springs past that feel just as real as when they happened. This spring, get yourself a perfume with spring-forward notes that, upon the first time your man smells it, will bring about a heartbreakingly nostalgic melancholy, a Proustian heartache that will send him into a nearly impenetrable sadness until the dawn of summer.

Stella Eau de Toilette

Nothing says “Spring” quite like the combination of peonies and roses. It’s also a classic perfume pairing, and the one at the heart of Stella Eau de Toilette. It’s such a rock solid, tried-and-true formula that perfumers have been using it for years. This Stella McCartney fragrance smells almost exactly like the botanical gardens your man went to the summer after fifth grade. You know, the place where his grandma died of a heart attack. While sitting on a bench. Waiting for him. Because he wandered off when he got bored, and was mad at his grandma for dragging him here when he really wanted to stay home at play video games. His last words to her were “Leave me alone, Gammy!” He’ll think of that when he smells this on your neck.

Dolce & Gabbana’s Floral Drops

This elegantly combines a jumble of — you guessed it — floral scents, including waterlily, narcissus, and papaya flower. That papaya is supposedly just a minor note, but it really makes its presence felt. Your man will certainly notice its distinctive smell, and it will remind him of the time when he was 12 and his parents took him out to a Thai restaurant. He’d just taken his first bite of green papaya salad when they told him they were getting a divorce.

Diptyque Florabello

This is primarily a Spring scent that traffics in “aquatics” but don’t sleep on the palpable apple blossom. Your boyfriend certainly won’t, because that’s what’s going to remind him of the orchard/winery where they held his high school graduation. The only thing missing from Florabello is the pungent smell of marijuana, like that emanating off of your boyfriend’s cap and gown. What kind of asshole gets stoned before his high school graduation? Your guy, that’s who. Oh, it was some kind of half-baked, pardon the pun, protest, or statement, about how institutions are bullshit and rituals are hollow. Whatever.

That was an important moment to his family and he ruined it for them. At least they took the day off from griping at each other to come together to tell at him. They yelled at him in front of everyone, which in and of itself wasn’t nearly as bad as the shame he felt over disappointing them.

Isbael by Tocca

Sangria, roses, vanilla, leather, oranges —there are just so many distinctive, disparate Spring scents in this perfume. Your guy may find it a bunch of scattered attempts that don’t add up to much. Kind of like his life. He’s tried so many different “passions” and never found traction or success in any of them. He’s over 30 now — closer to 40, in fact — and he knows not-so-deep down that he’s wasted his life. Also not-so-deep down is that he fears you think that too. 

Byredo La Tulipe

She was his first love, you know. But if he’d be honest with himself, she was his only true love. Sure, he loves you, but she’s definitely the one that got away. He should have gone to Europe with her. She asked him to go, but he really thought he was going to get that internship at Bear Sterns. And then the 2008 crash happened. He was out of a gig, and she was in Paris, painting and modeling. Anyway, she never went out in public (or stayed in for an evening of epic, tender lovemaking with your guy,) without a few strategic drops of this Spring scent. 

Clean Air

He didn’t speak to his father for six years for reasons too distant and complicated to fully understand. But then, when he was 23, he got a call out of the blue from dad, inviting him on a ski trip. It would be a sweet way to reconnect — they’d skied all the time when your man was a little kid, before the divorce, before the pain.

Ski Patrol never did find him. The “mountain air” base note of Clean Air was probably what your boyfriend’s father smelled with his final breaths.

Images: Pixabay, FragranceNet, Amazon