There’s wearing cologne…and then there’s apparently crop-dusting an entire apartment with it.

Living with roommates already means learning to tolerate each other’s habits, but for this autistic tenant, one issue had quietly become impossible to ignore: one roommate’s insanely strong perfume. Every single day, the scent filled the shared apartment so heavily that it lingered in the hallway, clung to furniture, and even made using the bathroom difficult.

And this wasn’t just a “that smell annoys me” situation. Because of sensory hypersensitivity, strong fragrances genuinely make him feel physically overwhelmed and unable to breathe properly. After months of trying to tolerate it, he finally worked up the courage to politely explain the problem and ask if there could be some kind of compromise.

Instead, the conversation immediately became defensive. The roommate acted offended, twisted the conversation into “you want me to put perfume on outside?” and suddenly the other roommate was treating him like he’d committed some unforgivable social crime for… wanting to breathe comfortably in his own home.

AITA for telling my roommate his perfume is too strong

I live with two guys in an apartment (each one rents a room) but we have common areas like the hallway, the toilet and the kitchen.

So one of them has been using a very strong perfume every single day since he came to the apartment.

I am a diagnosed autist, strong smells make me unable to breath because I am hipersensitive so each time I come home from work I choke on his perfume. If I want to go to the toilet, I am unable to go inside because the smell is just so strong I feel like I could choke.

Oof, that’s rough.

I’ve been struggling for months until now, I decided that I cannot live like this anymore and armed myself with courage to tell him the problem I have with his perfume.

I told him nicely, explained him about my sensitivity and didn’t really tell him to do anything specific, but it seems like he uses his perfume on his room and when he goes out, the smell is just so strong it sticks to the furniture and the whole room is filled with the smell in seconds.

He looked at me as if I just insulted him or something and said “what” and said “what do you want me, to put it on outside?” “how am I gonna bring the perfume outside?”.

Sir, it’s

So I just said “I don’t know what to say, this doesn’t happen because I decided to” and he just walked out of the apartment with that strong smell.

Later I talked with my other roommate and told him that I talked with him about this, to which he replied “How do you tell him to do that?!” and I asked “what?”…

It seems like the other roommate, the one who wears the strong perfume said I told him to use the perfume outside, and now both of them think I am an a****** because I am not respecting his right to wear perfume.

Oh please.

But I feel like he is not respecting my right to be able to breath without wanting to jump out of the window.

So, AITA for telling him?

Reddit largely sided with NTA, with many pointing out that politely bringing up a shared living issue is exactly what roommates are supposed to do.

Most commenters agreed this wasn’t about controlling someone else’s style or banning perfume entirely—it was about the intensity of it affecting shared spaces to the point where another tenant physically struggled to exist comfortably in the apartment.

The general consensus was that shared living situations require compromise from everyone, and that includes realizing when your signature scent is strong enough to qualify as a chemical event.

This person says he is simply not considerate.

This person is scent sensitive and understands the struggle.

And this person says they clearly have zero empathy.

If your cologne enters the room five minutes before you do, it might be time to ease up on the trigger finger.

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