Boyfriend made a comment about my vagina. Now I’m even more self conscious

For context, we have been together for a little over a year and living together for 3 months and he hasn’t made any other comments like this in the past. I was about to leave our room to shower when I mentioned that I’ll be quick (of course I washed my body, my point was that I’m not shaving my legs- which usually takes a while). As I was walking out, he said “make sure you wash ‘down there’ too.” It almost seemed like nothing to him, but it made me feel so self conscious. I’ve had problems for a long time (long before him) worrying about how I smell/taste, to the point where I’ve never actually let ANYONE eat me out. I have good hygiene, but my smell is distinctive. Not bad and I don’t have anything wrong down there (it’s always been like this) but I definitely notice it. Although I’m not sure if my boyfriend does. We have sex fairly often and he never says anything or acts odd. So I guess my question is, how do I bring up that his comment made me feel bad about myself? And how do I tell him that my self image has been extremely bad regarding my vagina and how it smells/tastes? And how do I get past this in the future?

Submitted April 28, 2019 at 06:30AM

For context, we have been together for a little over a year and living together for 3 months and he hasn’t made any other comments like this in the past. I was about to leave our room to shower when I mentioned that I’ll be quick (of course I washed my body, my point was that I’m not shaving my legs- which usually takes a while). As I was walking out, he said “make sure you wash ‘down there’ too.” It almost seemed like nothing to him, but it made me feel so self conscious. I’ve had problems for a long time (long before him) worrying about how I smell/taste, to the point where I’ve never actually let ANYONE eat me out. I have good hygiene, but my smell is distinctive. Not bad and I don’t have anything wrong down there (it’s always been like this) but I definitely notice it. Although I’m not sure if my boyfriend does. We have sex fairly often and he never says anything or acts odd. So I guess my question is, how do I bring up that his comment made me feel bad about myself? And how do I tell him that my self image has been extremely bad regarding my vagina and how it smells/tastes? And how do I get past this in the future?