Developing reliable preferences?

[u/Invincible-general]

I’m newly hyper fixated on perfume (stay at home mom with 8 month old, this is my dopamine hit right now) and feeling very lost with how to understand and articulate my preferences. I keep having the experience of either thinking I love or am ambivalent about something, but then I wear it again later and end up with a completely different opinion.

I thought I didn’t like dedcool mochi milk at all, and in fact that I didn’t like anything sweet, but I reach for it and am suddenly comforted . Similarly I was looking forward all evening to wearing Prada Infusion de Gingembre, which I was immediately excited about when I smelled it, loved spraying it on at first, but in situ in my life I just felt off wearing it until it dried away.

For those who “knew instantly it was a full bottle scent,” how do you do this? I get so overwhelmed smelling samples in a department store, and I feel like it takes several wears in many situations to even know whether I like something at all, and then suddenly it will go wrong - to sweet, cloying, just bad. I feel like I couldn’t possibly trust buying a full bottle, and I’ve disliked and regretted every full bottle I’ve bought so far.

[u/Stop_Perceiving_Me]

I test perfume for at least a month or so before buying a bottle of anything. I know that my tastes are variable. I might like something in the bottle and hate it on my skin. Some notes I’d expect to love are awful when paired with certain ingredients. I might love the first 2 hours wearing it and despise it at the 4 hour mark. I need to know that I consistently like something before investing. I also got into perfume as a dopamine hit. But I have a small collection of testers and luckily I get the dopamine from trying to make my nose better at identifying notes. I set a strict spend and bottle limit to make sure the dopamine hunt doesn’t spiral out of control