Of my two best friends, I (30F) live with J (36M) who I’ve known for 5 years, and am also very close with C (37M) who I’ve known for 2 years. They are good friends as well, although I spend more time with them one-on-one than together.
C comes from a place where dental care is not common. His teeth are visibly messed up-sure they stick out at strange angles, but it’s more unusual than off-putting, and doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is the SMELL. Sometimes it’s not perceptible at all, but other times you can smell it from up to 7 feet away, even if I know he’s brushed his teeth that day. It smells a bit like pond water, but -overwhelmingly- like dead animal. If we’re in the car together, the window has to be open in order to breathe; if we’re at coffee I typically look down, and when he speaks I cover my drink. We still spend time together because it hasn’t been too bad until it escalated recently.
He’s very sensitive about the issue and worries people talk about it behind his back. As he has no insurance or extra money, I’ve gently suggested a new program in our area that fixes teeth if he feels insecure about it and is open to try, and even mentioned a time I dealt with similar health issues (I am severely immunocompromised and got an infection after mouth surgery, successfully treated). He was grateful for the info, but has made no effort to pursue it.
C constantly complains he’s getting older now and still can’t get girls. He’s otherwise attractive, intelligent, very funny, has a cool very stable job, and lots of talent/knowledge/passion in his interests. He is charismatic with friends and otherwise an absolute joy to be around, and I have no idea how to tell him this is almost certainly the sole issue.
Flash to the other day- we had game night at our house, which we do often, and I made cocktails. He put his half-finished glass near the bookshelf, where I couldn’t find it for two days until I was doing a weekly deep cleaning and went looking for it. I was horrified to find a FULL glass with a diversity of mold and bacterial cultures (4+ individual), that had somehow managed to form in an alcohol glass in less than 2 days. My roommate J (who knows about our friend’s issue) saw it and is banning him from the house, and would like for my immune safety that neither of us hang out with C until the problem is fixed. He’s right- in the past few months I have started seeing more signs of perio illness in myself and am worried I’ll have to go through treatment again, which was extremely rough on my body because of my illness.
C has also expressed romantic interest in me in the past, to myself and our friends, which although he seems to have dropped, I’m not completely sure. I shut this down long ago and made it very clear we will not be partnered ever in the future. Still, I also want to be clear to him again that even if he fixed his teeth, our friendship will stay as-is. I am his closest friend, and am still wondering whether I should even be the one to mention this again, or if he needs to know other people have a problem with it.
None of my previous recommendations that he get help for this have been taken seriously, how can I tell him if he doesn’t fix this issue, we won’t see each other again?
TL;DR Close friend has emotionally sensitive dental hygiene-related health issue (worse than originally thought) and has begun endangering myself others by not treating it.