What your favourite perfume is actually telling you about what you want in bed

I have this perfume bottle amongst my huge, slightly pretentious collection of artisanal perfumes. I'm French, it was bound to happen. I remember exactly who I was the first time I wore it, every single time I wear it again, no exceptions, it's almost annoying. The guy I was dating. Whether I was ovulating. Whether I was sad, or horny, or both, because apparently that's allowed, who knew. My whole body remembers even when my brain is somewhere else, thinking about emails, thinking about literally anything else. The body's been keeping its own diary this whole time, and nobody asked it to. 

I should say upfront what I do, since it explains why I notice this kind of thing for a living. I'm a sexologist, which means women come to me to talk through what's going on with their desire, their arousal, the parts of sex that feel stuck or far away. I'm also trained as a clinical aromatherapist, which means I spent years learning what specific essential oils do to the nervous system and physical body. I mean the real pharmacology of it. Most people assume those two trainings live in completely different parts of my brain… they don't. They've never once been separate for me. 

Here's where the two trainings meet. Smell is the only sense with a direct line to your amygdala. Everything else, sound, sight, touch, gets processed and filed first. Scent walks straight in. Which means by the time I notice my own hand is on a particular bottle, my body has already made an executive decision without consulting me. And since arousal lives in that same neighbourhood of the brain, your nose might be the most honest thing in the room. 

And girls will be girls, so eventually, in every single session, we end up talking about perfume. Beauty always comes up somehow, usually right when we're getting to the good part. I've started paying attention to which bottle a client mentions in passing, because nine times out of ten she's already told me what she wants before either of us said a word about sex. 

Basil (Ocimum basilicum), if we're being precise about it. Sharp, green, a little unhinged, the kind of note that smells like it's already halfway out the door. Try Jo Malone's Basil & Neroli if you want to smell what I mean. This is the woman who's exhausted from running everything, including her own desire, especially her own desire, since apparently that needed managing too. She rebuilt the apartment. Rebuilt herself. Became the proof everyone points to. Somewhere in the rebuild, she started directing the bedroom too, telling him where to put his hands, when, how fast, because someone has to, and it's always her. Basil is courage that's sick of being in charge. What she wants, underneath all that competence, is to stop being asked so carefully, so quietly, like she might bolt, and instead hear someone ask once, low and certain, and actually wait for her yes, and when it comes, finally let go of needing to manage anything else, let him take it from there, let herself gasp without immediately apologizing for the noise, let someone else carry the wanting for once instead of steering it herself the whole way through. 

Roman chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile) is sneakier. Soft enough to fool everyone, including the woman wearing it. Camomille Satin, made by Dries Van Noten with Guerlain's perfumers, smells exactly like a Sunday that's lying to you. This is the woman who got so good at sedating herself she forgot that's what was happening. She thinks she's calm. She's anaesthetised, sitting on something underneath, anger probably, grief possibly, who's counting, certainly not her. She is drowning in soft and has been for years. Someone refusing the performance outright is the only thing that actually reaches her, mouth against her ear mid-act, voice low and certain, not stopping anything, just saying it right into her skin, I know you're not actually this calm, so stop being calm for me, right here, right now, and feeling her breath catch and break and finally, finally let go, her whole body arching up off the bed like something underneath has been waiting years for permission and just got it. 

Myrtle (Myrtus communis) is my favourite and the strangest, and I'll be honest, this one's more myth than science, but the myth is too good not to use. Myrtle's been tied to Aphrodite since ancient Greece, sacred to love and to weddings, and L'Occitane's Myrte, from their Notre Flore collection, was built on the old story of sailors approaching Corsica who used to smell wild myrtle riding the wind before the island was even visible, land arriving through the nose before the eyes had caught up. That's her exactly, she's already wanting something and hasn't gotten the memo yet, her body three steps ahead and sending signals her brain hasn't cleared for release, so whoever's in bed with her needs to notice her breathing change before she's said a word, and move on it right then, because nobody has ever come from being asked to explain what's happening to her body while it's still happening. (But of course, consent is key here)

And lemon (Citrus limon), in the energetic tradition I trained in alongside the clinical side, is a heart oil, said to open the heart and clear whatever's gone stagnant there so love and pleasure can move through again. It tracks with her completely. She already knows how to ask, easily; that's never been her issue. The issue is staying still. 100BON's L'Eau du Parc, all natural, lemon right up front, is the one I'd hand her. What she actually needs in bed is someone who holds her hands above her head and keeps them there, who keeps giving and giving until she stops bracing for the moment she's expected to give something back, until her hips start moving on their own and she's stopped managing any of it, until just lying there and feeling it stops being uncomfortable and starts, finally, being the entire point. 

My own bottle, since I've spent this whole piece reading other women through theirs, is jasmine (Jasminum grandiflorum). Berdoues 1902's Jasmin, sitting next to a Cédrat and a Cèdre Blanc from the same line that I wear plenty, but Jasmin is the one I keep coming back to. Jasmine essential oil treats emotional exhaustion, women mid-transition, and the exhaustion that has nothing to do with sleep. So, when my hand finds that bottle without checking with me first, it's pointing at wherever I'm running low that week. What I want underneath it is joy, plainly, the uncomplicated kind, not another thing to manage well.

Which means what I need in bed is someone who can find what's still alive in me underneath whatever I'm carrying that week and bring it up without making me prove I'm ready first, even on the nights I don't have any certainty on hand for him to match. I don't always want to be met at full volume. Sometimes I want to be the one who gets to stop running things and let someone else figure out how to make me laugh again before they make me come. 

Four perfume bottles, four very different essential oils, plus mine, which I suppose is the fifth, and your body's been choosing between all of it long before you've had a coherent thought about any of it. So, the next time your hand goes straight for one without asking your brain's permission first, don't shrug it off as a habit. Smell it properly. Ask what it's really telling you you're in the mood for tonight, then go find someone worth telling (or doing it with). 

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Chloé Ellert is a sexologist, clinical aromatherapist, and founder of Her By Chloe - a brand built at the intersection of female desire and nervous system healing. She created the Smut-Scent Method, a framework that uses scent and erotic imagination/smut as entry points back into the body, drawing on the science of olfaction, somatic psychology, and the innate intelligence women have always had about their own pleasure. Her work lives in the space between the clinical and the intimate: where a woman stops managing her desire and starts trusting it.