I (39F) recently stayed with my cousin (40M) and his wife for a couple days and I'm worried that I was in the wrong here. I grew up in the same neighbourhood as my cousin and we went to the same school and were in the same grade as each other. He was bullied really horribly throughout school for a lot of things, and one of the things he was bullied over was sort of related to his hygiene (he's always had dandruff and just naturally really greasy hair, plus he's always liked wearing it longer, which doesn't help).

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I never did anything to try and stop or lessen the severity of the bullying he endured. I never was out there bullying him myself, but I admit that I never tried to prevent it and at times made comments that probably made things worse. I accept fully that I was an asshole as a kid/teen for this, and that kind of factors into why I think it's possible that I made the wrong move here.

My family will be moving to the city my cousin and his wife now live in in just a couple weeks and I was over there last week in order to get some logistical things in order, get some of the furniture we want, that kind of thing. My cousin and his wife were nice enough to let me stay with them instead of getting a hotel, which I really appreciated. I'd never stayed with them at their place before, though I've seen them many times at family gatherings since he and I graduated high school and went off to college.

While I was staying with them, I noticed quite a few things that were, honestly, just sort of gross while I was staying there. First, when I got to their place I went to help my cousin get some bedding stuff out from under their bed, and I was having a hard time ignoring the way their bedding (as in the stuff currently on their bed) smelled. It had that musky, super sour scent to it that you get if you don't wash sheets and stuff after sex ever, it was honestly super offputting. When we actually took out the sheets and pillow cases I used, they all were at least a bit dingy looking, like they were never washed very often so all the sweat stains and stuff had just set into the fabric (though they definitely had been washed before I used them).

My cousin would also go out in dirty, sometimes stained shirts. He wouldn't go to work like that, but he would go out like that when he was just going out to go to the grocery store and even when he and his wife took me to Ikea and to lunch. He also definitely never wore deodorant on a day he wasn't at work even when we went out somewhere and I never heard either of them shower on a non-work day (4 days in a row) either.

I tried gently bringing up that he should take better care of himself and his stuff, but he got super defensive and upset when I did so. Obviously I didn't press the issue after that, though I really think he should still take better care of his hygiene. I'm just wondering if this was an assholeish thing to bring up at all or if this really should be addressed with him and maybe I'm either not approaching it right or just the wrong person to tell him.