Why Do Women Leave Partners in Their Late 30s? The Science of Female Desire | Sarah Hill

0:00Sarah Hill:Welcome to Live Well Be Well, a show to help high performers improve their health and well-being.

0:10Sarah Hill:What happens as a woman ages? So perimenopause, menopause, thank God, has been spoken about so much more. Women are feeling more heard than ever before and starting to understand this phase. I've had a few people that I know that have said, you know, my girlfriend's broken up with me and she's coming into her late 30s. and they actually referenced your

0:30Sarah Ann Macklin:and I'm like speaking to her

0:32Sarah Hill:ask her directly

0:33Sarah Ann Macklin:and so there's this like

0:35Sarah Hill:there's a two prong approach one do women kind of get this spur and want to leave men even if they're not on the pill they're just in their natural cycling and want to go maybe this is my one last chance or I don't know fling I don't know there's so many contexts but basically leave their partner and go and explore but then also is there a second prong approach but also as we start changing in our phases and our cycle as we get older and we less produce babies that's the whole point why we're having periods do men become less attracted to us because do our pheromones decrease do things change like this whole kind of weird phase right right it's

1:12Sarah Ann Macklin:one that i'm like what happens right okay so i'm gonna answer this in two like i'm gonna break the question into two yeah and i'm gonna start with the less um happy answer and then i'm gonna answer

1:25Sarah Hill:the one that's like really interesting sandwich yeah so here's your yeah so here's the shit

1:29Sarah Ann Macklin:sandwich i'm gonna tell you the shitty part right now i mean there there's a ton of research that shows older women are less attractive to men than younger women i mean it's just a fact of life and you know and um and that's true whether we like it or not and and it's because our hormones are decreasing it's like the male brain is wired to find cues related to fertility attractive because men who had a preference for cues related to lack of fertility because of age and menopausal status, they wouldn't have passed down many children, right? They wouldn't have passed that preference for those qualities to anybody, you know?

2:04Sarah Ann Macklin:And so evolution has wired men to have a preference for cues related to fertility. And so what that means is that, yes, on average, women are less attractive to men as they get older. And like I said, it's true whether we like it or not. And, and yeah, and there's so much evidence of this. And this is why, you know, these products and surgeries and everything that try to extend the youthful appearance of women are so monetizing, you know, is because this is something that women are because it's so linked with beauty. Standards of beauty are linked with fertility are linked with partner preferences.

2:41Sarah Ann Macklin:And, and so that's the unfortunate thing. So what, what, what, you know, and, and that's

2:47Sarah Hill:annoying because men get more attractive as they age.

2:49Sarah Ann Macklin:I know, I know, no, it's a total, it's a totally, it's totally unfair. And yeah, so it's totally unfair. So, so that's the bad part. So the other thing that I think is really interesting is, is what happens with women, right? And so like, do women's partner preferences or mating strategies change as they get older? And this is a really interesting question. And, and there's two lines of research that kind of speak to this issue that I think are really interesting. So the first is just that, you know, we know that women's sex hormones influence mate attraction. We've known this for a long time.

3:26Sarah Ann Macklin:And what this tells us is that as women's hormones change over their lifespan, this probably is also going to influence their attraction to their partner, right? So not just their partner's attraction to them, but given that sex hormones play a role in attraction, it's probably going to change the nature of the attraction in the relationship, right? And this could mean that if your partner was just, you know, he was really sexy, but he's kind of a jerk, right? And then you're going through menopause and the sexiness doesn't matter as much because estrogen is being released in much lower levels.

3:56Sarah Ann Macklin:You might think, this guy's a jerk. And then you leave him, right? Because you're like, like, that was the thing that was, that was the glue that was holding the relationship together. In other cases, right, you might be with this person, they're a really great person, you have this great history together, you might come to love them more, you know, because now all of a sudden your priorities and what's influencing attraction and your relationship satisfaction changes. And you see a lot of this, you know, you see that women as they're going through the menopausal transition, some couples get closer together, some couples get divorced, and it's almost always initiated by women.

4:30Sarah Ann Macklin:So something like 68 % of divorces are initiated by women. And this is true later in life. You also get this phenomenon where you get women who then were heterosexual and then take female partners, which is interesting, which again, you know, we know that sexual orientation is influenced by hormones, which is how you can get that nudging in and out of bisexuality that we talked about with hormonal birth control. We probably also get that in the menopausal transition, which I think can account for some of the kind of late in life lesbians that you see. And the other thing, so that's like one other, you know, that's like another thing that we know about the way that women's mate preferences and strategies can change is that when your hormones change, you change.

5:13Sarah Ann Macklin:And that means that it's going to change what you value in your relationship and the way that you feel about your partner. And that can either bring you closer together or drive a wedge, depending on what the glue was that's holding your relationship together. The other thing that happens to women, and this is prior to menopause, and this is actually usually prior it's like right on the cusp of perimenopause is that late 30s yeah like late 30s is what happens is um women start producing a lot of testosterone and it's really fascinating because there's this hypothesis that's out there um about what they call reproduction expediting and it's just this idea that women experience this surge in testosterone right prior to perimenopause that is sort of aimed at trying to get them to squeeze out another baby before they, you know, essentially before they are going to be infertile.

6:10Sarah Ann Macklin:And the way that this extra testosterone plays out in relationships is it can either just lead to a surge in sexual desire within the context of a relationship. It can also lead to women breaking up with their partners and wanting to explore additional avenues of partners or women taking lovers because you also tend to see that increasing and women in their mid-30s. And so all of these things are likely related to this little surge in testosterone that we get that's related to what they call reproduction expediting. And again, evolution by selection has shaped our brain, right, based on us inheriting qualities that led our ancestors to be able to successfully reproduce.

6:50Sarah Ann Macklin:And what this means is that our brain has all kinds of sneaky tricks that it wants to play on us to try to get us to reproduce, you know? And I think that on the one hand, like you hear about these things and it's like, oh my gosh, like really? Then on the other hand, it's like, this is another, you know, kind of circles back to the start of our conversation. When you understand these things and you know what's happening, it also gives you a lot more control to be able to say, I know what's happening here. Like, hold on, you know? And if you value your long-term relationship and like this is temporary.

7:24Sarah Ann Macklin:It's a temporary surge in testosterone. It's going to go away. And so if you're feeling bothered by this, I think that sometimes when women are feeling like these strong surges of sexual attraction, especially if it's to somebody other than their primary partner, they begin to question their relationship. And when you understand the biology behind it, I think that it gives us the tools that we need to not allow us to put too fine of a point on it and not have us questioning our relationships the way that we do. I think a A lot of women make the mistake of questioning their relationship about things that have nothing to do with the quality of their relationship.

7:59Sarah Ann Macklin:It just has to do with these little biological idiosyncrasies that we've inherited from our very prolific ancestors.

8:07Sarah Hill:Thanks so much for listening. To hear the full episode, there's a link in the description.