Does the Birth Control Pill Change Who You're Attracted To? | Be Well Moments

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0:10One of the core things in life, right, is to find a mate, potentially reproduce. That's kind of, if you look at evolution, I guess why we're having a period. That's the whole thing. And whether we want that today or not is a different question. But I guess in an evolutionary perspective. and you've written so much about understanding you know why we might be more attracted to a more kind of testosterone driven man in one part of the cycle to the other I know you've spoken about this so much right um but it is fascinating and you then kind of spoken about how that could be linked to potentially women that then go on the pill and come off it and then maybe break up with their partner because they're they imagine whether their attraction changes right how common is that?

0:54Sarah Ann Macklin:Well, so let's just start by backing up a little bit and just talk a little bit about estrogen and about partner preferences. And one of the things that we talked about early in our conversation was just this idea that our bodies have to do two distinct tasks in order to reproduce, right? There's the sex and attraction piece, and then there's the implantation and pregnancy piece, right? Sex and attraction is coordinated by estrogen, right? So when estrogen is rising, that is when conception is getting ready to be or is possible from sex. And during that time, estrogen prepares our brain to be maximally able to choose a high quality mate, right?

1:33Sarah Ann Macklin:And so there's been research for several decades now, I think it's about 25 years now in the making, this research has been done looking at estrogen and its role in partner choice. And what it tends to find is that when women are in an estrogenic phase of the cycle, so especially near ovulation when estrogen is peaking, that during this time women express a heightened preference for cues to things like facial, vocal, and behavioral masculinity, right? So qualities related to testosterone. And this is hypothesized to be the case because testosterone is one of these things that we call like a good genes marker.

2:08Sarah Ann Macklin:And we call it a good genes marker because the fact is that men who have like a masculinized male face, for example, that tells us that their body was releasing a lot of testosterone during development. And that's something that male bodies will not do if they don't have an immune system that's high enough quality that they're able to allow themselves to be immunosuppressed long enough to be releasing that testosterone because testosterone is immunomodulatory. And when testosterone goes up, your immune system functioning goes down, right? Because our body has a limited energy budget. And when it's increasing investment here, that means there's less to be invested there.

2:52Sarah Ann Macklin:And one of the primary trade-offs that the body makes is between testosterone and immune system functioning. And it's this really interesting relationship. And they've shown this in so many different types of species. And it seems to be sort of a fundamental trade-off that sexually reproducing species make, is high testosterone suppresses the immune system. And so because of this, our bodies will not release high levels of testosterone if we're immunocompromised, right? Because the body is like essentially has the hierarchy of needs, right? It's like survival. So that way you can have sex and then sex, right?

3:27Sarah Ann Macklin:And so if your immune system can't handle being suppressed because it's going to, you know, cause your body to get sick and fall apart, your body will just lower testosterone levels. And so the reason that testosterone is believed to be a good genes marker is because it is an indicator of like immune function of a man because a man who does not have a high quality immune system would not release high levels of testosterone during development. And so that a man has a masculinized male face and like a deep voice, which means masculinization of the vocal cords. Behavioral masculinity means masculinization of the male brain.

4:03Sarah Ann Macklin:All of these things wouldn't happen in the case of somebody with a low functioning immune system because their body would pump the brakes on testosterone release to direct that energy toward immune function. So that's the reason that we hypothesize that testosterone is a good genes marker. All right, so now we're going to flash forward and talk again about estrogen. We find that when estrogen is high and rising across the cycle, that this tends to be associated with a heightened preference for cues to facial, vocal, and behavioral masculinity, right? So essentially leading the female brain to be oriented toward men with like good genes, right?

4:41Sarah Ann Macklin:Good immune genes who are likely going to be able to help produce really high quality, healthy offspring. And so this research has been going on for 20 to 25 years, you know, showing that as estrogen levels rise, that this is associated with this increase and these changes in the preference for facial, vocal, and behavioral masculinity. And then you enter in the birth control pill, right? And what the birth control pill does is it prevents ovulation, right? And ovulation is how our body releases and produces most of its estrogen, right? And so estrogen starts to increase and peaks in response to egg follicles maturing and then being released and getting or being prepared to be released.

5:22Sarah Ann Macklin:And when you suppress that, then women aren't producing very much estrogen, right? Women who are using hormonal birth control produce far, far, far less estrogen than women who are naturally cycling, particularly during this first half of the cycle and in what we call the peri-ovulatory window or the fertile window when estrogen levels are at their highest, which is generally five days prior to ovulation and then the day of ovulation itself. So for a naturally cycling woman, you're going to go through this waxing and waning of hormones where you're going to be attuned to things that are related to masculinity, right?

5:58Sarah Ann Macklin:So testosterone cues. And then women who are on the pill, they don't have that surge, right? And so researchers have proposed, you know, if estrogen plays an important role in terms of influencing who we're attracted to, like, might that then mean that women who are on hormonal birth control, who aren't ovulating and therefore aren't producing high levels of estrogen, might they not, you know, express this preference for facial, vocal, and behavioral masculinity? And so researchers studied that. And what they find is that lo and behold, women who use hormonal birth control do tend to have a preference for a slightly less masculinized male face voice and set of behaviors.

6:38Sarah Ann Macklin:And so this means that when you're on the pill, it could potentially have an impact on who you're attracted to. And so then your question was like, how often does this happen? So this is actually a really great question. And it's something that I can speak to with some data. So we have a paper that's under review right now and we did a study with unnatural cycles the fertility tracking app that's what i use yeah i love it i love yeah i love it no sponsorship yeah yeah yeah no sponsorship yeah so yeah and i don't have a financial relationship with them i have a research relationship with them um where we've done um they've worked with us to um allow us to look at their data to be able to um with user consent people everybody always consenting there's a whole headline going around about.

7:24Sarah Ann Macklin:I know about all these different things. And anytime that they at least have done research with us, there's always a consent form where people are signing off and they know that their data are being used anonymously for research, scientific research purposes, not for like marketing research purposes. But we did a study where we sent out a survey to people who were just onboarding, who were just starting. And we asked them about what type of birth control they were on when they met their partner. And we got a sample of women, half of whom chose their partner when they were on hormonal birth control and the other half who chose their partners while they were naturally cycling.

8:03Sarah Ann Macklin:And all of them were just discontinuing hormonal birth control. So here's a bunch of women, a large sample of women who are all discontinuing hormonal birth control to start using natural cycles and cycling naturally. Half of these women chose their partners when they were on the pill, the other half chose when they were naturally cycling. Then we looked at changes in attraction. So did the women report that they were experiencing after discontinuing birth control? Were they experiencing changes in attraction? Were they experiencing changes in sexual desire? And then we also looked at logged sexual behavior over the course of several cycles.

8:41Sarah Ann Macklin:And what we found was really interesting. And so one thing that we found was that women who chose their partners when they were on the pill or on hormonal birth control, that they have less sex across the cycle with their partners than women who chose their partners when they're naturally cycling, which is consistent with the idea of differences in attraction, sexual attraction, because sexual attraction generally predicts sexual frequency within the context of a relationship, although there's a lot of variabilities that play into that. So don't read too much into that, anybody who's listening to this who's feeling nervous about that statement.

9:15Sarah Ann Macklin:So that's one thing we found. We also found that women who chose their partners when they were on hormonal birth control reported that they were less attracted. They reported having less attraction to their partners. But then the question about what happened to their attraction to their partner when they went off of birth control, what we found was a really interesting pattern. And we found that for about 25 % of women reported, and this is the women who chose their partners when they're on the pill. 25 % reported that they felt less attracted to their partners. 25 % reported that they felt more attracted to their partners.

9:51Sarah Ann Macklin:And about 50 % of women said that they felt no differences in attraction. So is this something that happens like that where you go off the pill and then you feel different about your partner? Absolutely. And there's been studies where they find that the average levels of attractiveness are significantly lower after going off of it if you chose somebody who's not sexually attractive. And that all is like all of a sudden the blinders come off and then your hormones are like, what are you doing? But, you know, when we like broke it down in terms of frequency with which people experience that as an effect, we found about a quarter of the sample experience feeling diminished attraction to their partner.

10:32Sarah Ann Macklin:And like whether or not that's diminished attraction, you know, to the extent that they're like, I'm not attracted to this person. I'm guessing not. It just might be like less. You know, some cases, because obviously this does happen. And I've heard from so many women who've had that experience where they went off the pill and they're like, this isn't going to work anymore. And it's heartbreaking. Because I mean, you can imagine like if you choose somebody and in cases of at least three women that, and these are just women I know personally, they ended up getting divorced after discontinuing hormonal birth control because of a lack of attraction to their primary partner.

11:07Sarah Ann Macklin:And so that does happen, but it doesn't happen all the time. And in fact, the majority response seems to be that they don't notice any change in attraction with 50 % of women saying no, right? And then 25 % saying they feel more attracted to their partner, right? So like, so for some women, they go off of it and they're like, oh my gosh, like, I chose this really sexy partner and my brain wasn't even paying attention to it, you know? And it's like, and all of a sudden you're like off the pill and your estrogen brain is like, yes, yes. Thanks so much for listening. To hear the full episode, there's a link in the description.