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

An episode of [Live Well Be Well with Sarah Ann Macklin | Health, Lifestyle, Nutrition](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1508380100), 9 Mar 2026, 12 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/1033d1554/podcast/play/116259249/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-2-2%2Ffedef727-8dac-05ec-566d-ae69bac9c473.mp3

Can your cycle and contraception influence who you find attractive? This clip explores how rising estrogen near ovulation aligns with stronger preferences for facial, vocal, and behavioral masculinity, why testosterone can signal immune robustness, and what happens when ovulation is suppressed by the pill. It also examines data on changes in attraction after stopping hormonal birth control, including the 25 percent less, 25 percent more, 50 percent no change pattern, and reported differences in sexual frequency among women depending on when they chose their partner. Watch the FULL podcast here: https://youtu.be/tNoDNnpSkdA Sarah Hill in conversation with Sarah Ann Listen to the full episode here. Watch the full episode on YouTube here. *** This episode is sponsored by: NOWATCH: The compassionate health trackerConnecting body and mind with unique stress recovery insights so you can live fully today15% off with code LWBW15 at https://nowatch.com/ Mojo: the app for expert-led courses in better sex.Learn from world-class sex therapists and relationship experts with courses tailored to your needs.15% off with code LiveWell15 at mymojo.com/livewellbewell *** The Great British Veg OutHow to support your gut, energy, and hormones by eating more — not less. 👉 https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/p/the-great-british-veg-outReset Your HealthIf your body feels off after stress, travel, or burnout — this is where to start. 👉 https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/s/reset-your-health-in-30-days 👉 Practical beats perfect.Here’s a free 5-recipe PDF I use to support energy and stress during busy weeks.https://sarahannmacklin.com/5_free_recipes 👉 If this resonates, you can join the thousands who readThe Compassionate Cure each week.https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/ *** Let’s be friends! 📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahannmacklin/📹 Subscribe: http://www.youtube.com/@livewellbewellsarah 🐦 Twitter: https://x.com/SarahAnnMacklin 📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livewellbewellpodcast💌 Newsletter: https://sarahmacklin.substack.com/

## Transcript

[0:00] Welcome to Live Well Be Well, a show to help high performers
[0:04] improve their health and well-being.
[0:10] One of the core things in life, right, is to find a mate,
[0:14] potentially reproduce. That's kind of, if you look at
[0:18] evolution, I guess why we're having a period, that's the
[0:21] whole thing. And whether we want that today
[0:23] or not is a different question, but I guess an evolutionary
[0:25] perspective. And you've written so much about
[0:28] understanding, you know, why we might be more attracted to a
[0:31] more kind of testosterone driven man in one part of the cycle to
[0:34] the other. I know you've spoken about this
[0:36] so much, but it is fascinating. And you then kind of spoken
[0:41] about how that could be linked to potentially women that then
[0:45] go on the pill and come off it and then we break up with their
[0:48] partner because they're, I don't know whether their attraction
[0:52] changes, right? How common is that?
[0:54] Well, so let's just start by backing up a little bit and just
[0:57] talk a little bit little bit about about estrogen and about
[1:01] partner preferences. And you know, one of the things
[1:04] that we talked about early in our conversation was just this
[1:06] idea that, you know, our bodies have to do 2 distinct tasks in
[1:10] order to reproduce, right? There's the sex and attraction
[1:12] piece, and then there's the implantation in pregnancy piece,
[1:15] right? Sex and attraction is
[1:17] coordinated by estrogen, right? So an estrogen is rising, that
[1:20] is when conception is getting ready to be or is possible from
[1:24] sex. And during that time, estrogen
[1:27] prepares our brain to be maximally able to choose a high
[1:31] quality mate, right. And so there's been research for
[1:35] several decades now. I think it's about 25 years now
[1:37] in the making. This research has been done
[1:39] looking at estrogen and its role in partner choice.
[1:43] And what it tends to find is that when women are in an
[1:46] estrogenic phase of the cycle, so especially near ovulation
[1:50] when estrogen is peaking, that during this time women express a
[1:54] heightened preference for cues to things like facial, vocal and
[1:58] behavioral masculinity, right? So qualities related to
[2:01] testosterone. And this is hypothesized to be
[2:04] the case because testosterone is one of these things that we call
[2:06] like a good genes marker. And we call it a good genes
[2:10] marker because the fact is that men who have like a masculinized
[2:15] male face, for example, that's that tells us that their body
[2:19] was releasing a lot of testosterone during development.
[2:23] And that's something that male bodies will not do if they don't
[2:27] have an immune system that's high enough quality that they're
[2:30] able to allow themselves to be immunosuppressed long enough to
[2:35] be releasing that testosterone, because testosterone is
[2:37] immunomodulatory. And when testosterone goes up,
[2:41] your immune system functioning goes down, right?
[2:44] Because our body has a limited energy budget.
[2:46] And when it's making, when it's increasing investment here, that
[2:50] means there's less to be invested there.
[2:52] And one of the primary trade-offs that the body makes
[2:55] is between testosterone and immune system functioning.
[2:58] And it's this really interesting relationship.
[3:01] And they've shown this in all like so many different types of
[3:04] species. And it seems to be sort of a
[3:06] fundamental trade off that that sexually reproducing species
[3:10] make as high testosterone suppresses the immune system.
[3:13] And so because of this, our bodies will not release high
[3:16] levels of testosterone if we're immunocompromised, right?
[3:20] Because the body is like essentially has the hierarchy of
[3:22] needs, right? It's like survival.
[3:25] So that way you can have sex and then sex, right?
[3:27] And so if your immune system can't handle being suppressed
[3:30] because it's going to, you know, cause your body to get sick and
[3:33] fall apart, your body will just lower testosterone levels.
[3:37] And so the reason that testosterone is believed to be a
[3:40] good genes marker is because it is an indicator of like immune
[3:44] function of a man, because a man who does not have a high quality
[3:48] immune system would not release high levels of testosterone
[3:51] during development. And so that a man has a
[3:53] masculinized male face and and like a deep voice, which means
[3:57] masculinization of the vocal cords.
[3:59] Behavioral masculinity means masculinization of the male
[4:02] brain. All of these things wouldn't
[4:05] happen in the case of somebody with with a low functioning
[4:09] immune system because their body would pump the brakes on
[4:13] testosterone release to direct that energy toward immune
[4:16] function. So that that's the reason that
[4:19] we hypothesized that testosterone is a good genes
[4:22] marker. All right, so now we're going to
[4:23] flash forward and talk again about estrogen.
[4:26] We find that when estrogen is high in rising across the cycle,
[4:30] that this tends to be associated with a heightened preference for
[4:33] cues to facial, vocal and behavioral masculinity, right?
[4:36] So essentially leading the female brain to be oriented
[4:39] toward men with like good genes, right, good immune genes who are
[4:43] likely going to be able to help produce really high quality
[4:46] healthy offspring. And so this research has been
[4:49] going on for 20 to 25 years, you know, showing that as estrogen
[4:54] levels rise, that this is associated with this increase
[4:57] and these changes in the preference for facial, vocal and
[4:59] behavioral masculinity. And then you enter in the birth
[5:03] control pill, right? And what the birth control pill
[5:05] does is it prevents ovulation, right?
[5:08] And ovulation is how our body releases and produces most of
[5:11] its estrogen, right? And so estrogen starts to
[5:15] increase and peaks in response to egg follicles maturing and
[5:19] then being released and getting or being prepared to be
[5:22] released. And when you suppress that, then
[5:25] women aren't producing very much estrogen, right?
[5:28] Women who are using hormonal birth control produce far, far,
[5:32] far less estrogen than women who are naturally cycling,
[5:34] particularly during this first half of the cycle And in what we
[5:38] call the periovulatory window or the fertile window when estrogen
[5:42] levels are at their highest, which is generally 5 days prior
[5:45] to ovulation and then the day of ovulation itself.
[5:48] So for naturally cycling woman, you're going to go through this
[5:52] waxing and waning of hormones where you're going to be attuned
[5:56] to things that are related to masculinity, right?
[5:58] So testosterone cues and then women who are on the pill, they
[6:02] don't have that surge, right? And so researchers have
[6:05] proposed, you know, if estrogen plays an important role in terms
[6:10] of influencing who were attracted to, like, might that
[6:13] then mean that women who are on hormonal birth control, who
[6:16] aren't ovulating and therefore aren't using high levels of
[6:19] estrogen, Might they not, you know, express this preference
[6:23] for facial, vocal and behavioral masculinity?
[6:26] And so researchers studied that. And what they find is that, lo
[6:29] and behold, women who use hormonal birth control do tend
[6:32] to have a preference for a slightly less masculinized male
[6:36] face, voice and set of behaviors.
[6:38] And so this means that when you're on the pill, it could
[6:41] potentially have an impact on who you're attracted to.
[6:45] And so then your question was like, how often does this
[6:47] happen? So this is actually a really
[6:49] great question and and it's something that I can speak to
[6:53] with some data. So we have a paper that's under
[6:55] review right now and we did a study with unnatural cycles, the
[7:00] fertility tracking. Out that's what I use.
[7:02] Yeah, I love it. I Yeah, I love.
[7:04] It no sponsorship. Yeah, yeah.
[7:06] No sponsorship. Love it.
[7:07] Yeah. So yeah.
[7:08] And I don't have a financial relationship with them.
[7:10] I have a research relationship with them where we've done,
[7:14] they've worked with us to allow us to look at their data to be
[7:17] able to with user consent, people, everybody although.
[7:21] She is consenting. There's a whole headline.
[7:23] I know there's. About I know about all these
[7:25] different things and any time that, that they at least have
[7:28] done research with us, there's always a consent form where
[7:30] people are signing off and they know that their data are being
[7:33] used anonymously for research, scientific research purposes,
[7:37] not for like marketing research purposes.
[7:39] But we did a study where we, we sent out a survey to people who
[7:44] were just on boarding, who were just starting.
[7:47] And, and we asked them about what type of birth control they
[7:50] were on when they met their partner.
[7:52] And, and we got a sample of women, half of whom chose their
[7:56] partner when they were on hormonal birth control and the
[7:59] other who the other half who chose their partners while they
[8:02] were naturally cycling and, and then, and all of them were just
[8:07] discontinuing hormonal birth control.
[8:09] So here's a bunch of women, large sample of women who are
[8:12] all discontinuing hormonal birth control to start using natural
[8:15] cycles and cycling naturally. Half of these women chose their
[8:19] partners when they were on the pill.
[8:20] The other half chosen, they're naturally cycling.
[8:23] Then we looked at changes in attraction.
[8:26] So do the women report that they were experiencing after
[8:29] discontinuing birth control? Were they experiencing changes
[8:32] in attraction? Were they experiencing changes
[8:35] in sexual desire? And then we also looked at
[8:38] logged sexual behavior over the course of several cycles.
[8:42] And what we found was really interesting.
[8:44] And so one thing that we found was that women who chose their
[8:46] partners when they were on the pill or on hormonal birth
[8:49] control, that they have less sex across the cycle with their
[8:52] partners than women who chose their partners when they're
[8:55] naturally cycling, Which is consistent with the idea of
[8:58] differences in attraction, sexual attraction, because
[9:01] sexual attraction generally predicts sexual frequency within
[9:04] the context of a relationship, although there's a lot of
[9:06] variabilities that play into that.
[9:08] So don't read too much into that.
[9:10] Anybody who's listening to this, who's feeling nervous about that
[9:14] statement. So that's, that's one thing we
[9:17] found. We also found that women who
[9:18] chose their partners when they were on hormonal birth control
[9:21] reported that they were less attracted.
[9:23] They, they reported having less attraction to their partners.
[9:26] But then the question about what happened to their attraction to
[9:29] their partner when they went off of birth control, What we found
[9:33] was a really interesting pattern.
[9:34] And we found that for about 25% of women reported, and this is
[9:40] the woman who chose their partners when they're on the
[9:41] pill, 25% reported that they felt less attracted to their
[9:46] partners, 25% reported that they felt more attracted to their
[9:50] partners, and about 50% of women said that they felt no
[9:53] differences in attraction. So is this something that
[9:58] happens like that where you go off the pill and then you feel
[10:01] different about your partner? Absolutely.
[10:03] And there's been studies where they find that the average
[10:06] levels of attractiveness are significantly lower after going
[10:08] off of it. If you chose somebody who's not
[10:12] sexually attractive and that all, it's like all of a sudden
[10:15] the blinders come off and then your hormones are like, what are
[10:18] you doing? But you know, when we, when we
[10:22] like broke it down in terms of frequency with which people
[10:25] experience that as an effect, we found about 1/4 of the sample
[10:29] experience feeling diminished attraction to their partner.
[10:32] And like whether or not that's diminished attraction, you know,
[10:35] to the extent that they're like, I'm not attracted to this
[10:37] person. I'm guessing not.
[10:39] It just might be like less. Yeah, you know, some, some cases
[10:43] because obviously this does happen.
[10:45] And I've heard from so many women who've had that experience
[10:47] where they went off the pill and they're like, this isn't going
[10:49] to work anymore. And it's heartbreaking because I
[10:52] mean, you can imagine like if you choose somebody and in case
[10:54] in cases of at least three women that, and these are just women I
[10:58] know personally, they ended up getting, they ended up getting
[11:00] divorced after discontinuing hormonal birth control because
[11:04] of a, a lack of attraction to their primary partner.
[11:07] And and so that does happen, but it doesn't happen all the time.
[11:11] And in fact, the majority response seems to be that they
[11:14] don't notice any change in attraction with 50% of women
[11:17] saying no, right? And then 25% saying they feel
[11:19] more attracted to their partner, right?
[11:21] So like, so for some women, they go off of it and they're like,
[11:24] Oh my gosh, like I chose this really sexy partner and I, my
[11:27] brain wasn't even paying attention to it, you know?
[11:29] And it's like, and all of a sudden you're like off the pill
[11:30] and your, your estrogen brain is like, yes, yes.
[11:36] Thanks so much for listening to hear the full episode.
[11:39] There's link in the description.

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