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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/19829193 on 2023-09-18 18:39:12.

This is a throwaway account. I (25F) met my boyfriend (24M) at a party right after the pandemic. He was a friend of a friend and he immediately caught my eye. I walked up to him to introduce myself and tried to shake his hand. He immediately got uncomfortable and told me he had hyperhidrosis (an excessive sweating condition) so he couldn’t shake my hand, apart from that he was friendly and so funny, we immediately clicked and I even got his number.

Later that night the friend in common told me he was super self-concious about his condition and about how he smelled because of it. We started chatting and went on a few dates, it was amazing, I had never met a guy like him and we always had so much fun together, he was kind, considerate and the kind of guy who my parents would love.

I could tell he was always nervous about his sweat and insisted on not getting to close to me. One day I asked him why he acted like that and he basically confessed to me he was scared I wouldn’t like him because of his smell. That was completely false, I couldn’t care less about how he smells, he’s an amazing guy and at that point I already had feelings for him, his smell wouldn’t change anything between us. I don’t know what came over me but I completely lied and told him I had COVID earlier that year and I permanently lost all sense of smell, he immediately seemed to calm down and relax, I could tell that in the next dates he wasn’t as nervous or self-concious.

When we became official I thought about telling him, but since I didn’t mind AT ALL his smell (it isn’t even that bad, it’s mostly an insecurity he created in his own head) and he seemed comfortable I made an impulse decision to expand this lie to my whole family and friends. Now everyone thinks I can’t smell at all, honestly life is the same because you don’t even use smell that much, except my boyfriend isn’t self-concious around me. I feel bad for not telling him, but I don’t want him to go back to how he was before.

So, AITA for not telling my boyfriend of 3 years I haven’t actually lost the ability to smell?