Episode 449: Dr. Sarah Hill: How Birth Control Changes Your Brain, Dating Choices, and Evolutionary Psychology

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins.

You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Greg.

Can birth control really change who you're attracted to or even who you become?

On this episode of Habits and Hustle, I'm joined by Dr.

Sarah Hill, who's an evolutionary psychologist and author to explore how hormonal birth control impacts the brain, behavior, and mate choice.

We dive into how the pill can alter sexual desire, stress response, emotional sensitivity, sensitivity, and even influence the type of partner you're drawn to.

It may even affect your mental health and motivation in ways most women aren't told.

So whether you're using birth control or just curious, this is an eye-opening conversation that will change how you think about hormones and your identity.

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Okay, you guys, this is going to be a goodie.

We have Sarah, Dr.

Sarah Hill on the podcast today, who's an evolutionary, an evolutionary psychologist.

By the way, I want you to tell us what that is, but she is someone who talks all about hormones,

the effects of birth control.

You wrote a whole book on this, and mating, which is, again, I love all your stuff.

So I'm so happy you're here today.

Thank you.

I'm so excited to be here.

And I will tell you what an evolutionary psychologist is.

Please.

So I'm a psychologist, and the thing I'm really interested in is trying to study behavior and motivation.

So I'm like really interested in why people do things that they do.

And the lens that I use to do my research is that of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection.

And all that that means is that I use the tools from evolutionary theory to make new predictions about why people do the things that they do and think the things that they think and feel the things that they feel.

And yeah.

That's so that's that's it.

That's a great, that's a great summary of what you do.

But then you wrote a book about birth control.

And that that was, but you wrote that book a while ago, but it seems to get, it's been seeming to get more, a lot of traction recently.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I did.

So I wrote the book in 2019.

Well, it was published in 2019.

And I've spent my research career studying women and trying to understand, especially sexual motivation.

That has been sort of my bread and butter in research is trying to understand women's motivational states with respect to sexual relationships.

And then I went off the birth control pill that I had been on for more than a decade of my life.

And when I went off of it, I felt like I woke up.

Like I felt like I woke, I like went from like a black and white line drawing into like this full dimensional, colorful reality.

And I kept asking myself, like, is there something about those hormones that I was on that influenced me?

And, you know, it's funny because I had published in my research that I had done, you know, throughout my career studying women and women's psychology, published papers about the ways that women's hormones affect their motivational states and sexual desire and everything else.

And never even crossed my mind that these synthetic hormones that I was taking were then, of course, also going to influence the way that my brain worked and the way I felt and the way I experienced things.

And so I went to the research literature to see what had been published on birth control pill and women's brains.

And I saw that, oh my gosh, you know, there's all this research that's been around for like 30 years that nobody's ever told anything about.

And so that's what ultimately led me into that research area to really begin to uncover what we know and don't know about hormonal birth control in the brain.

And as you noted, I did publish this in 2019.

And it's really, you know, in a lot of ways, it was a little bit before its time because people weren't really having these conversations yet about birth control.

And it's really been in the last two years or so that things have really exploded.

And women are really interested in trying to better understand, one, what does birth control pill,

what do birth control pills do to their brain and the way that they experience the world?

But then also, who are they off of it?

And trying to better understand the role of their hormones and everything else in the way that they experience the world.

So why do you think now or like two years ago, it became such a hashtag worthy topic like hormones?

It's become very trendy.

It's very big, like you said.

What do you think?

What was the like, what was the trajectory that all of a sudden people are really talking about this now?

Yeah, that's such a great question.

And I've always wondered it myself.

I mean, I think it was a combination of, you know, I think that the pandemic made us all look inward just in terms of our health and trying to understand our bodies.

It gave us a lot more time because we had time on our hands during that time to try to educate ourselves.

So I think that there was a little bit of that where people were kind of trying to understand their bodies a little bit more during the pandemic because they were trying to keep themselves healthy in the face of this, you know, unpredictable kind of a virulent threat.

But I also think that just as the next generation of women has sort of started to, you know, phase out of the reproductive years and younger women have sort of moved into that space.

This is a much more savvy population in some ways.

Like I'm a Gen Xer and you know, when I was growing up, if my doctor gave me something, I never thought twice about it.

I didn't think what, I didn't think about what was in my tampons.

You know, I didn't think about anything.

I mean, it was just like, okay, this is like what you take and this is what you put in your body.

And you know what I mean?

And the younger generation of women are suspicious of that.

And they're like, wait a minute, like, what is in these tampons?

And, you know, sure enough, it's a bunch of chemicals.

Right.

And now there's like labels on there and we know what's in them.

And so I think as these women who are a little bit more suspicious of the idea of just put something in your body and shut up, little lady, you know, that they're not willing to put up with that.

And so I think that these younger generation of women in their quest to try to better understand what's going into their bodies has really begun to do a deep dive and trying to understand the impact of synthetic hormones and in particular the pill on the way that their bodies sort of experience the world.

So let's talk about that because I think this is how I found you.

Because you initially started talking about how our brains are very different and our choices, our life choices are very different when we're on birth control versus when we're not.

on birth control.

Can you just talk about some of these major things that change our brains when we're on synthetic hormones?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the first thing that we need to do is just orient ourselves to a naturally cycling woman, right?

So this is somebody who's not using hormonal birth control.

And let's learn a little bit or talk about a little bit about what their hormones do.

And so if you are a naturally cycling woman, meaning you're not on the pill, but you're having cycles, the first day of your cycle is the day you get your period, right?

So that's why your doctor is always asking, when was the first day of your last menstrual period?

It's because that is the start of your cycle.

And at that point, your levels of sex hormones are really low.

So even though women get a hard time all the time about, you know, being hormonal because they're having their period, that is like literally the time in the cycle when our hormones are at their absolute lowest.

And when our hormones are really low, that tells our brain that it needs to stimulate our ovaries to begin egg follicle maturation, right?

So, our brain tells our ovaries, start working on some eggs.

And as those eggs are beginning to develop, that leads to the release of estrogen, right?

And as the eggs are maturing and developing and getting ready to ovulate, estrogen levels rise, rise, rise, rise, rise.

And so, for naturally cycling women during the first two weeks of the cycle, it's characterized by this nice, beautiful rise in estrogen that corresponds to the period of time in the cycle when sex can lead to conception, right?

And so, it's not surprising that what we tend to see with research in estrogen is that when estrogen is high and rising, like getting close to ovulation, women experience increases in sexual desire.

They feel sexier, they have more sex, they're more likely to have orgasms, they have more energy, they're more attuned to all things related to mating.

So, they notice men, they can decipher the scent differences between different types of men, they're cued into testosterone levels in men, and all of these things correspond to this big rise in estrogen that women get right prior to ovulation, because this is the time in the cycle when sex can lead to conception, right?

And so it's like evolution by natural selection made our brain primed for mating and the ability to sort of distinguish between high and low quality mates at this time when estrogen is high and rising.

So then you ovulate, and then that empty egg follicle actually becomes a temporary endocrine structure and it starts to release a second sex hormone called progesterone.

So the first two weeks are characterized by this high and rising levels of estrogen, right, that corresponds to the release of the egg.

Women feeling great and happy and sexy and flirty and noticing men.

And then all of a sudden their estrogen levels crash and instead it's replaced by the second sex hormone, progesterone, which remains relatively elevated for the last two weeks of the cycle.

And during this time, women are hungrier, they're sleepier, their energy levels are lower, they tend to be more emotionally a little bit all over the place.

In psychology, we call it labile, right?

It's like when you're kind of moving around a little bit.

What's it called?

Labile?

Labile.

Isn't that a fancy word for like

being kind of all over the place?

Right.

It's scattering.

Yeah.

A little emotionally, you know, sensitive.

And so for naturally cycling women, you get this nice rise in estrogen, which is characterized by one set of states, usually related to sexual desire and attraction.

And then you get the second half of the cycle, which is characterized more by emotional sensitivity and tiredness and hungry and all of that stuff.

And so this is important to keep in mind because this is what the normal sort of state of affairs is for women.

Now, what happens with the birth control pill is all of that gets shut down.

Okay, so you take this pill and it tells your brain, do not stimulate your ovaries, right?

And so your ovaries never start maturing egg follicles.

You don't release estrogen.

You don't release an egg, which is why you don't get pregnant.

You don't release progesterone.

Instead, you take this daily synthetic set of hormones, which is comprised of a level of the synthetic progesterone, which is called a progestin, right?

And it is what fools the brain into not stimulating the ovaries.

And then a relatively low level of estrogen.

And so every day, women get the same hormonal message.

And that hormonal message is relatively high level of synthetic progesterone or progestin, low level of estrogen.

And so this, of course, creates a state when you're getting the same message repeated every single day.

This creates a very different state than that beautiful waxing and waning between like sexual desire and, you know, feeling sexy and alive and energetic, and then feeling a little bit tired, sleepier, and hungrier.

And instead, it makes the same daily hormonal message that is one that tends to be characterized by relatively low levels of sexual desire, low energy levels, more sleepiness, a greater risk of depression.

And you don't get those big surges in feeling sexy or sexual desire or any of these other things that we tend to see in naturally recycling women.

And instead, you get the same daily hormonal message every day.

And so it creates a very different state.

So it kind of blunts your emotions in some way.

Yeah, it does.

It blunts your like highs and lows.

So

because of that,

you would say we make different choices.

So you were saying that we would pick and choose different mates and partners even based on that.

Right, we could.

So here's what the research tells us.

So one of the things that we know about estrogen when it's moving across the cycle for a naturally cycling woman is that when estrogen levels are high and rising, this is related to an increased preference in cues that are related to, for example, genetic compatibility.

So women prefer the scent of genetically compatible men when estrogen levels are high and they're not able to tell the difference.

between them when they're at low fertility.

And so estrogen primes our brain to be more sensitive to these these fine-tuned differences between men, and women are able to distinguish between genetically compatible and incompatible mates and are more dialed in to those that they're compatible with in a way that they're not at low fertility.

We also know that when estrogen is high in the cycle, that women express a greater preference for facial, vocal, and behavioral masculinity in men, meaning that they prefer men with more masculinized male faces, with sort of more social dominance in their like personalities.

When they're not on the pill, yeah, when they're not on the pill.

So, this is all this is all women when they when they're at that estrogen, high estrogen point in the cycle, because your brain is primed for mating and evolution by natural selection has shaped our brain to be sensitive to levels of estrogen.

And when estrogen is high, it turns up the volume on all things related to being able to decipher between you know, good and maybe less good mates.

And it also increases women's attent.

I mean, it just makes them more sexual.

They are just like more dialed into their sexuality, right?

So that's with naturally cycling women.

When women are on the pill and you're not experiencing this, so

you're not getting that big surge in estrogen.

You never experience that shift that's going to lead you to have a greater preference for, for example, masculinized male faces and voices and behaviors.

You're not going to get that shift that leads you to be able to tell the difference between men who might be genetically compatible and incompatible based on their scent.

You're also not going to be motivated to choose a partner based on sexual attraction because your sexual attraction and just sexual desire tends to be dampened.

And so what we tend to see is that when women choose partners when they're using hormonal birth control, they tend to de-emphasize the quality, like they tend to de-emphasize the extent to which they value qualities related to sexual attraction, right?

They tend to prefer less masculinized male faces and they tend to prioritize other cues that have absolutely nothing to do with sex.

Like what?

So for example, like a man's provisioning ability.

So is he going to to be a stable financially providing partner?

Is this somebody who's going to be somebody that they see as potentially a good father?

And obviously these are incredibly important things, right?

Most women who are choosing long-term mates wouldn't look at that list of characteristics and say, this is a terrible decision, right?

It's terrible, but it's going to lead you to something a little bit different, right?

And sometimes.

More stable.

Well, yeah, more secure.

Yeah, more stable, more secure.

More feminine.

Yeah, more feminine.

And what's really interesting about this is that when the researchers have done studies where they looked at the divorce rate of women who chose their partners when they're on or off the pill.

And women who choose their partners when they're on the pill are less likely to get divorced.

But when they do get divorced, they're overwhelmingly the ones who initiate it, which is also really interesting.

Really?

Yeah.

And so it suggests that it does lead to more relationship stability in some ways because you're sort of choosing based on your head, you know, like not your heart.

But that of course comes at a cost.

And for some women, what happens when they go off of hormonal birth control and they do start cycling again, and all of a sudden they're going through these periods of estrogen surge, if all of a sudden they don't like what they see or what they smell in some cases, then it leads them to become less sexually attracted to their partner.

And sometimes it can lead to relationship breakups.

And so, what tends to happen, and there's been research that's looked at, you know, what happens when we follow couples longitudinally.

So, over time, when they've gotten together, when they were, when the woman was using hormonal birth control, and then she discontinues it later on.

And what researchers find is that if women were chose their partners when they're on the pill, go off the pill, that it does lead to changes in attraction and sexual desire with respect to their partner.

But for some women, it gets better.

So if they just so happened to choose a partner who had those qualities that their naturally cycling self likes, that it's associated with an increased sexual attraction to their partner, more sexual desire, and they have more sex.

But for some women, it leads to the opposite.

and the women discontinue it and all of a sudden they don't feel attracted to their partner their sexual attraction to them decreases and then it causes relationship problems and so essentially what it's doing is it's taking the blinders off yeah you know and and so some of the time when you take the blinders off you know it's kind of like this the show on like netflix like love is blonde yeah that is right yeah it's like it's like you choose a partner without the you know with the with the little mask on yeah the goggles on you have no idea what they look like and sometimes you pull off the goggles and it works sometimes you pull off the goggles and it doesn't work and that's pretty much what is going on with hormonal birth control.

It's because it's a little bit of a different version of yourself who is choosing that person than who you are once you're off of it.

So how about on the male side?

Because if you're picking,

if you're, if the females,

certain things are dampened, like her sexual libido and her desires and all these other things are like more dampened.

What kind of man is attracted to a woman on birth control versus one that's not?

That's like such a fascinating question.

And nobody is like, nobody's asked the question quite as you just asked it.

Right.

And that's a really interesting question and like, and something that like, I'll totally have to go back to the lab and research.

But what they have done is they have looked at like the extent to which women, or pardon me, the, the extent to which men desire women who are either using or not using hormonal birth control.

And what research generally finds is that lo and behold, you know, men are more attracted to women when they're naturally cycling, particularly when they're at a high estrogen part in their cycle.

And one of the things I talk about in my book is this really brilliant study that was done.

This was done several years ago now, that was done at a strip club.

And they had all of the women who were working there as dancers keeping a diary.

And they indicated whether they were using hormonal birth control or not.

And then every day they just simply wrote, did they get their period today or not?

And how much money did they earn?

Right.

And so they were able to look at all of the dancers, their tip earnings over the course of two menstrual cycles.

And then they were able to divide the women up based on whether or not they were using or not using hormonal birth control.

And what they found was that for women who are naturally cycling, so again, experiencing their own hormones, you get this really sharp increase in tip earnings that are corresponding right around high fertility.

So they're earning more money when estrogen is high in the cycle than they are when estrogen is low in the cycle.

And these women are out-earning the pill takers whose earnings were relatively flat across the cycle.

They were out-earning them by several hundred dollars a shift.

And so, just going to show that, even you know, and we don't know what it is about that.

Like, was it something about the way the women were moving because they were feeling sexier?

Is it something about the way that they smell?

Because we also know from research that men prefer the scent of women at high fertility compared to low, suggesting that men can pick up on estrogen levels by scent, which doesn't really make a whole,

it's not very surprising because many cells in the body body express estrogen.

And so we would expect that this would be the case.

But men do seem to pick up on the scent of estrogen.

And so it could be that.

It could be that the women are dressing sexier when they're dating.

I mean, we just have no idea exactly what it is, but men seem to be picking up on it and they prefer that.

And so those women earn more money than the women who are naturally, or who are using hormonal birth control because men are dialed in to cues of fertility, right?

And again, evolution by natural selection would have it no other way way than for a man to be most turned on by women at times when conception is possible.

Because men who had that tendency, they would have passed down a greater number of genes because those are the women that they would be sleeping with.

That is so interesting.

Yeah, totally.

And like, these are not things that you ever would think about, right?

Like, no.

Partner choice and all of these things.

What is like the percentage of women, do you know, that are on birth control?

So I'm different age brackets.

Different age brackets.

So the by far the most frequent users are women in their young, like early 20s.

Yeah.

You know, like 20 to 30 is like the big age range.

20 to 25 in particular is like really hot.

And in some cases, I've seen population estimates as high as like 40% or something.

It's very, very high.

And then it's, and then it falls off.

And this is the group of women who's usually most motivated to avoid pregnancy.

I mean, a lot of these women are in college or trying to build their careers or, you know, just trying to avoid parenthood for other reasons.

Right.

And what about IUDs?

How about that?

Yeah.

Well, so it depends on what IUD you're talking about.

But

the copper one, the copper one doesn't have the hormonal effects, right?

And so that is definitely one that I would recommend for women who are willing to try it.

I know it sounds really scary and barbaric.

And so not everybody's like game to want to have that put in.

And doctors are getting better about it.

They used to not want to give that to women who hadn't had kids because they were like, oh, you know, really?

Yeah, but they're getting, they're getting over that position, position, thankfully.

But so yeah, that is a non-hormonal option that is obviously incredibly effective.

It tends to, besides, you do tend to get heavier cramping and bleeding with that.

But other than that, it has a very manageable psychological sort of profile of side effects.

And so that's one that I like as an alternative to something hormonal.

The hormonal IUD also has a lot of these same effects that we've been talking about.

What would be the point of taking an IUD with hormones if you could take one without hormones to get the same effect?

I know.

No, amen.

I have no idea.

Yeah, no, I honestly, I have no idea.

And so some people might say, well, you know, you can avoid copper toxicity because you do, it does create an inflammatory experience like down in your cervix to have that there.

But it really is minor.

And most women, it's not anything to worry about.

And they've done a lot of safety tests on it.

And I think that there's a lot of myth around the idea of copper toxicity with that.

I've had that my whole life.

Yeah.

I think 20 years.

so.

Yeah, and I changed it, but like every 10 years you change it.

Yeah, no, they're great.

I mean, yeah, no, that's like, that's definitely my, my favorite because it does allow you to cycle and experience your normal, you know, state of your amplitude of being.

Whereas with the hormonal IUD, it's like, you know, most women who are on it, and here's, there's a few funky things about it.

So one is that most women who are on it, when they're first on it for like the first year or so.

The copper one?

No, this is the hormonal one.

Well, the hormonal one.

Yeah.

It's like the women don't ovulate, right?

And so they're, it's like the hormones being are released to such an extent that they're telling the brain not to ovulate.

Okay.

And so doctors will tell women, like, oh, it's, you know, locally acting hormones, which is bullshit because there's no such thing as a locally acting hormone.

Yeah.

Hormones go into the bloodstream and they go everywhere that blood travels.

And the last I checked, that's everywhere.

Right.

And that includes the brain.

Yes.

And so like the idea that like somehow they managed to just circulate down there is like the biggest bunch of crap.

And then people will do anything and say anything.

Well, I know, it is sell stuff or to like it's so frustrating because a lot of you know i've talked to so many women who've had the experience of feeling like they're totally crazy because their doctor is like well you know i've like i've been so depressed since i started this and you know and and and unable to even get out of bed because of my depression and and i feel like it was this iud but the doctor said the hormones act locally and i'm like that's that's like malpractice totally right it's just crazy i'm like there's no such thing as a locally acting hormone and so you know most women aren't ovulating and and when they're on it, but then a lot of them, about halfway through the five years that they're on it, a lot of them will start ovulating.

So then the hormones are in there, but they're not, the brain is like up to they're kind of figured out what's going on.

And so, because the levels are low, they keep it very low.

And so the brain is like, all right, these levels aren't very high.

And ultimately, we'll start stimulating the ovaries to ovulate again.

But the question I've always had is if you are able to protect yourself from pregnancy with the hormonal IUD without suppressing ovulation, so right, so not turning that off.

Why do you need the hormones in there at all?

That's what I just said.

Like, it makes no sense.

Like, no, I know.

Who in the hell would get an IUD that has hormones?

I never understood that.

Like, the whole purpose of getting an IUD, so you don't need hormones.

Well, so I've heard people, so I've heard people get the hormone one because it's plastic, and they're like, Oh, I don't want the metal in my body.

Okay, fine.

But this plastic one clearly doesn't need the damn hormones, or else, you know, it's not.

Exactly.

It's still, it's basically like, it isn't just like covering your

cervix.

Well, it's not really covering it, but it is putting something there.

And so your body is like, no, thank you.

I'm not getting pregnant.

That's what I mean.

It's basically like

a shield or

whatever you call it.

Right.

Yeah.

But what I wanted to ask you, because it sounds like, how about pheromones?

Where does pheromones fit into this?

So pheromones, you know, so pheromones are essentially like anytime they have a chemical signal that's affecting another

organism.

Right.

So if you smell my estrogen levels, then we call that a pheromone if that influences your behavior.

And so with a naturally cycling woman, you do get these kinds of pheromonal effects, as I've noted, since men, when they smell the scent of ovulating women, it tends to increase their testosterone levels.

So men actually get a little increase in testosterone in response to the scent of ovulation without knowing what it is, right?

They'll like smell t-shirts worn by women who are ovulating and they prefer the scent of the ovulating women compared to t-shirts worn by the same women at different phases in the cycle when estrogen is low.

And so, yes, so having like taking the pill, for example, can disrupt this, right?

It can prevent because women aren't in this nice estrogenic state at any point in their cycle, that's going to decrease some of these attraction-related molecules that women might already release otherwise.

And other, and it also seems to decrease women's ability to pick up on male form or pheromonal cues, right?

So, we we know from research that especially at high fertility when estrogen is high, women are really good at being able to detect metabolites of testosterone.

So, when men's bodies are breaking down testosterone, it releases different types of compounds that shed in the skin.

And women are really good at being able to pick up on it when estrogen is high.

Their brain is like, you know, like, I smell a man, right?

And yes, and yes, and like are really, it's like, it's attracting to them, right?

They, they are, they're drawn to it.

They like that.

And for women who are using the pill, no, you know, it's like, it's like they just, everything is shadow.

It's just blunted.

Yeah, it's just blunted.

It's that, it's that blindfold from like we've been talking about from that, um, from that show, Love is Blind.

Love is Blind.

Yeah.

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So, then, women, though, who are not on

birth control, they typically like,

what is attractive to a woman naturally?

And what is attractive, what is attractive to a man naturally?

Okay.

Yeah.

And obviously, when I, when I answer this question, it's going to have huge error bars around it because there's so much idiosyncrasy in everybody's partner choice.

Of course.

But just, you know, like, there are some things that men and women tend to desire sort of in equal measures.

And so, like, men and women both want a partner who's, you know, kind and understanding and a partner who's in good health.

And these are things that men and women are both looking for.

In ways that men and women on average tend to differ in terms of their partner choice.

Women, a naturally cycling woman, likes to strike a balance between what in the evolutionary sciences, we would call direct and indirect benefits.

Direct benefits are all of those things that you get yourself from your partner.

So for example, if they are a good provider, that would be, you know, a good direct benefit.

And that's one that we know that women desire in their partners.

We also know that women are interested in a long-term mating context with partners who exhibit cues related to being a good dad, right?

So, somebody who's going to be caring and be able to help care for children.

And so, those are direct benefits, anything a woman gets herself.

Indirect benefits are essentially good genes, right?

So, this is where we're looking for qualities that are related to genetic quality in a partner that we want for our children.

And obviously, this usually goes on unconsciously, right?

These tend to be the qualities that our brain just happens to find really sexy, right?

So something like having testosterone-related cues.

So we like men who have a nice chiseled jaw, right?

Broad shoulders, deep voice, you know, a dominant sort of personality.

These are cues related to testosterone.

And testosterone is what we call a good genes marker, simply because men who were able to release high levels of testosterone during development, that indicates that they probably had a high-quality immune system because men's immune systems get traded off with testosterone in a way that men's bodies will not produce high levels of testosterone if they have an immune emergency to deal with.

And so, the idea here is that only men who are in good health during development are able to release really high levels of testosterone during development because there is this trade-off between immune system functioning and testosterone levels, right?

And so, one of the reasons that our brain finds testosterone-related cues sexy in men is because only men who had relatively high functioning immune systems during development were able to release that and form those types of features.

And so, yeah, so it's, yeah, so that's like one type of a cue.

The scent of genetic compatibility, that's another set of sort of genes that we're looking for.

And we tend to pick this up by way of scent, right?

Sort of picking up on some of those cues that somebody might have different immune genes than your own, which are generally the ones that we find most attractive.

And for most naturally cycling women, what you see is that when we're choosing a partner, it's generally brokering that trade-off.

You know, it's like sort of understanding you want the sexy qualities that are going to, you know, just like really attract you and make you physically drawn to somebody.

But then also as a long-term partner, as somebody who's going to be, you know, sort of a good provider and, you know, be a good parent and so on and so forth.

And, you know, so for a naturally cycling woman, what you generally see is that there is some sort of trade-off, right?

Where they're making decisions about, you know, this person has to be somebody I'm attracted to, but also has to have these other qualities.

And then you find the person who best, you know, matches that set of criteria.

For women who are using the pill, it seems like all that, you know, what we call indirect benefits, that genetic compatibility and cues of, you know, immune system quality because of testosterone and all that, it seems like all that just gets shut down.

It's just like the light switch goes off.

Just goes off.

And it's just is focusing exclusively on these other partnership qualities, which again, isn't necessarily bad, right?

It's just different.

It's going to get you a different partner probably than what you would get if you were striking that balance between what, you know, who you're most physically attracted to and then, you know, who's going to be a good partner and, you know, good at provisioning.

And so that's, you know, women, men tend to be, you know, in a sort of natural state of things.

Men are also brokering that same balance, you know, but for men, there's a whole lot of emphasis placed on cues related to fertility and what we call reproductive value.

And fertility, of course, refers refers to the probability that a woman will be able to have a child with an act of sex.

And we know that for women, fertility peaks at the very young age of about 25 and then starts to decline.

And of course, it declines pretty rapidly after a woman's in her late 30s, mid to late 30s.

And men, of course, are dialed in to cues that have historically been related to fertility because, again, you know, over the course of evolutionary time, those men who just so happened to find women most beautiful when they were able to reproduce, they would have passed down that preference to a lot of sons.

Right.

Whereas if you have a man whose preference tended to focus on qualities related to older age, they wouldn't have passed down that preference to anybody.

Right.

Because no, those, yeah.

But that doesn't seem to be like, I think, are there very specific things that you can point to in a that men find attractive beyond just cues of estrogen cycles?

Right, right, no, and evolution.

absolutely not.

That's the only thing that matters.

No, no, absolutely not.

No, yeah, there's there are so many things.

I mean,

men's partner choices are just as complex as ours in a lot of ways.

And what you tend to see is that if men are just choosing like a short-term sexual partner, you know, then it's like, you know, looks and all the superficial stuff.

Yeah.

Men are choosing a long-term partner in addition to the cues related to fertility.

But

let me just make sure that I, that's really, that really is important to men's attraction i mean whether we like it or not it's like you know it's like it's also it's huge yeah youth youth and and because youth is related to fertility yeah exactly

founded yeah and so those things are tend to play a really important role but men are also like some of the things that they're most important that they find most important like when you ask men to rank order like how important are all these qualities loyalty kindness, right?

So some of these, you know, other types of things.

I think that's a bullshit, to be honest.

I think if they're not attracted to you.

Oh, yeah.

No, absolutely.

100%.

I think after that, that it's loyalty.

Because I have a lot of guy friends who are in their mid, let's say in their midlife, like 40s, let's say.

Even some of them are 50s, never been married, never have a serious girlfriend.

And I try to set them up all the time.

Yeah.

And I say to them, oh, I have the best girl.

She's this.

She's, she's.

pretty.

She's successful.

She's, you know, she's got a great personality.

At the end of the day, they're not interested.

Why?

unless they find her hot right physically right all those other qualities her success doesn't matter her confidence doesn't matter her sense of humor doesn't have doesn't matter i think some i think that with men it's this is i'm no evolutionary psychologist but i would say physical attractiveness is pretty much paramount.

I would completely agree with that.

No, I think that it is.

But in a lot of ways, I mean,

for us, for women, and for women in particular.

Well, no, so yes yes and no.

So no, I don't think that looks are paramount for women, but I will say that for women, because our, for us, what attraction is, is a lot more complex than for men.

Attraction for men is generally physical attraction, right, based on physical cues.

Women's attraction is a lot more complicated, right?

Just meaning that it's like for us, physical attraction, in addition to just being based on somebody's physical appearance, is also based on all kinds of things.

Like, does this person have, you know, a take-charge personality?

Does this person, you know, say the, like, the right things?

Is this person going to be a good provider?

And some of these other cues, I mean, it's like women are the ones who get the ick for a reason.

You know, it's like the ick is essentially like somebody just violated something that impacts our very complex and nuanced version of attraction, which is about more than just physical appearance.

But for us, attraction is just as important as it is for men.

It's just that what feeds into attraction for women is more complicated than just physical appearance.

Okay, that's that makes sense to me.

That makes sense to me.

But then why is there such a mating crisis?

Like people are not dating anymore, as a they're not having relationships anymore.

Right.

Yeah.

And, you know, that's such an important question because it's like, what is going to happen societally?

Yeah.

I mean, honestly.

And, you know,

I think the answer is very complicated.

I don't, I don't know that I know all the answers.

I think that one of the answers is just simply that, you know, we have the ability to regulate our fertility now with birth control.

And for most of history, we we did not have that ability.

And the fact is, there are a lot of people who now are saying, I don't want to have kids and I don't have to have kids.

Right.

And it used to be the case that that was never a possibility.

Right.

It's like, if you liked sex, you were going to be a mother, like whether you wanted them or not.

I was like, what do you want?

Like the idea of like, whether you want kids used to not be a question people could ask.

It was about whether or not you wanted to have sex.

Right.

You know, and so I think, you know, that like, like, that's one thing.

But like, why are people not wanting to have sex?

I think that there's a few things happening.

One is that I think hormone or endocrine disruptors have lowered testosterone to an extent that it's making people, you know, just less sexually motivated.

We know that testosterone is one of the big sexually motivating hormones and that higher levels are related to more sexual desire.

Lower levels are linked with less sexual desire.

So that's one thing is that we have these endocrine disrupting compounds that are lowering testosterone.

And I think that's part of the puzzle.

Another part of the puzzle is hormonal birth control.

And we know that hormonal birth control is something that's associated with lower libido, right?

So it can really kill women's sexual desire in a pretty significant way.

And so women are feeling less sexually motivated.

And they're feeling less sexually motivated in part because of the endocrine disruptors because their testosterone also is being lowered.

And then birth control can lower sexual desire further.

So I think that's also part of the picture.

I think another part of the picture is that now, you know, we have internet porn available everywhere.

And I think that men are like, why should I bother to do all of this work and have to jump through all of these hoops for somebody who's less hot than the person that I see on the computer screen?

And so I think that men are like not feeling as motivated to do the types of things that they used to have to do in order to get access to sex

by, you know, just by sort of using a cheap alternative.

And so I think that's also part of the picture.

Another part of the picture is that birth control has allowed women to achieve more than they've ever achieved in their entire lives, right?

In our entire history as a species, I mean, women are dominating.

I mean, it's like we're getting more college degrees, we're getting more advanced degrees, we're going to law school and medical school at a greater extent than men.

And women are hypergamous, meaning that they like to mate up.

So they like to be involved in relationships with men who have at least as much education as they have themselves.

So women are now in this position where they're looking up up to find partners who have the same levels, at least, of education and career success that they have themselves.

And there's just not a lot of men there because, you know, women are doing really well.

Men are kind of like, eh, I don't really, you know, I can just look at porn and then I don't have to do all this work and get all these degrees and jump through all these hoops in order to get sexual access because my brain is being tricked into believing I'm getting sexual access by looking at

pornography.

And then the last one, I think, is online dating.

And I think that what what that has created is made it really easy to find partners and for men who are doing well um so men in this climate like who have those really good jobs and have the types of qualities that women are looking for partners they are now entering the marriage market from the dating market a lot later than they used to and so what happens is because men are able to get access to dates just like it's so easy you know it's so easy to find a date yeah you haven't when you have a dating app and so they're not settling down until they're like 40 you know or even 50 you're 50 50 is now the new 40 yeah that's what they say that's right that's what they say that's what the men that's what the men are trying to tell us yes and so you'll have men who are hanging out in the dating market for a really long time and then you have women who go into the marriage market from the dating market earlier where they're like ready to settle down because they're gonna their fertility is gonna decline and so women then are up here in the in the marriage market right there's not a lot of men around because they're mostly hanging out in the dating market and the and then the women are also looking for people who are at least as educated as themselves.

And I mean, it's really causing problems.

Well, yeah.

And also from what, from the way you described it, what would what that would tell me is if men are getting married later, right, because they don't have to get married as early.

They have this dating app so they can date and they're, and now, and what they're attracted to is more youthful estrogen cycles.

They're going to end up dating younger girls.

Yep.

So the young girls are going to get married to these older men because for girls, men who are older can come across as sexy, not old.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But for girls, you know, older women look like older women.

Right.

Yeah.

It's like our brain, it's so interesting.

Yeah, go ahead.

Oh, no, I was going to say, and then what happens is it's leaving these women who have now been active, who have had a lot of success, you know, financially, in business, professionally.

They're leaving them in the lurch because now there's nowhere there's nowhere for them to go further, right?

Right.

And what my question is then, is why don't those women just go out with a younger guy who's just hot and just do what men used to do for all these years, right?

Like just do what men do.

Right.

They're successful men.

They want a younger girl.

So then they go end up with this girl.

Why don't women do that?

Right.

Well, and I think that there are some women who are starting more.

Right.

And it's, yeah, so, so there's, I've got two answers to that.

So one is that I think that women are starting to do that more, right?

So we see like, you know,

but they're not having kids with them.

No, they're not having kids with them, right?

It's not like

we're sort of seeing like the, you know, like the rise of the cougar, right?

Where you'll see older women dating the, and I mean, and they're just, you know, they're not serious boyfriends.

They're just like, they're just

playthings because the women are like, I have my own money.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

It's like, I've got, I've got my, I've got my own money.

I don't need a man for that.

I just want to have fun on my own terms.

And so then they just like take a hot guy that they can parade around and, you know, and have a good time with.

And, you know, Godspeed.

Men have been doing this forever.

It's a hundred percent.

But it's, it's, it's disrupting the natural flow of evolution and Darwinism.

I would say like, well, isn't survival of the fittest is all about it?

Well, it's so it's it's just really about whatever traits get passed down are the traits that you're going to see.

Right.

And so all that that means is that like, yeah, the tendency for older women to date younger men, they're not passing that preference down to anybody, you know, because they're not having any more offspring.

And the men aren't passing that tendency to want to mate with older women on to anybody either because there's no reproduction going on in that context.

And so, like, I don't think that it's really disrupting anything, you know, just because nothing is really changing.

Yeah, exactly.

Nothing's really changing.

But I think that there's not as much of that as there is for men because, you know, we spend most of our evolutionary history in a situation in a context, you know, as living as hunter-gatherers.

And women were very dependent on men for access to resources.

And so, like, you know, getting access to food and protection, particularly during pregnancy.

And because of that, we have inherited the psychology that is tends to be more coy, right?

So we tend to be more sexually cautious relative to men, and we tend to be more oriented toward long-term mating relative to men, just simply because throughout most of our evolutionary history, there was no short-term.

I mean, like if you're a woman, engaged in like short-term mating, you could end up with a baby.

And so even if you're choosing somebody as just a casual fling, there's this tendency for women to get emotionally enmeshed in those relationships because we're wired that way.

Right.

We're wired differently.

Yeah, we're just wired differently.

It's like we, we faced different adaptive problems throughout our history due to the fact that we're the ones who get pregnant, right?

And because of that, the costs of short-term sex and just being sort of casual willy-nilly are much greater than what they are for men.

And so, that's led to a divergence within our sexual psychology that tends to make men more oriented toward, toward casual encounters without really

developing any sort of strings attached.

Whereas for women, it tends to be a little bit more complicated.

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Are men attracted to successful women, confident women, established women?

Yes, but in as much as they're attracted to them first, right?

Like as you're talking about, like I don't think that any level of professional access or success can make up for if a man doesn't feel that a woman is physically attractive.

And what that can mean, though, is very broad, you know, because that doesn't mean, obviously, there's a lot of people that I think objectively, we could say, like, this person is not the most attractive person we've ever seen in their life.

And somebody's in love with them and thinks that they're beautiful, you know?

So it's like we have to, you know, sort of also take that with a grain of salt, sort of understanding the fact that there's, for the most part, there can be some somebody for everyone.

Right.

My mother would always say there's a pot, there's a lid to every pot.

I love that.

That's like beautiful.

That's perfect.

That's right.

Yeah.

I heard you say somewhere, I don't remember where, that looks is a number one predictor for women's upward mobility.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How is that for a depressing statistic?

Right.

Yeah.

They did a, they did a study where they were looking at different types of predictors for being able to transcend the social class in which you were born.

And, you know, in this great meritocratic society that we live in, we would like to think that it would be something like your educational attainment or, you know, where you went to school or what you majored in, right?

It might be something like this.

But instead, what the research found is that the strongest predictor for women for upward social mobility was their physical attractiveness.

And that this was more, this played a greater role in their ability to transcend their social class of origin than their family's existing socioeconomic status, their education level, and their career choice.

Wow.

Yeah, it's pretty depressing.

Isn't that depressing?

It is.

What's a man's number one predictor for upward mobility?

Oh, that's a really great question.

I don't know, but I am willing to bet that it is probably either educate.

I think it is some combination of like education that they get and then like their career choice is my guess.

Right.

Totally different, right?

Yeah, totally different set of.

Yeah, no, it's not his physical attractiveness.

It's definitely not.

exactly.

Do you know the other saying, like, if a man wants to be attractive, he stands on his wallet.

That's the other thing.

Yeah, yeah, I've heard that.

But the truth is, I hate to say it, but there, there's a reason why some of these things, there's a lot of truth in these things, right?

Like, that's why you see a lot of these, a lot of women I see with men who are like, wouldn't you wouldn't call them attractive by looking at them.

They're four foot three, bald, and not that physically attractive.

But I tell you, when they have like $100 million in in their bank account, they're very attractive dating the supermodel.

Yeah, it's really funny because we did this really cool study where we had men who are kind of average looking.

We had them photographed like looking like they were in a couple with women of varying levels of attractiveness.

And what do you think?

As soon as women see kind of an average, you know, kind of

kind of guy with a really beautiful woman, what do they think?

He's rich.

Yeah, exactly.

Of course.

And so, and so what we did is we asked people about like different qualities, you know, that these men had.

And just based on the virtue of the attractiveness of the women that men are pictured with, women infer all of these different things about like what they're like.

And including the fact that, yes, we see a man with a beautiful woman who's like far more beautiful than he is handsome.

There's this general assumption that we tend to assume that he is like financially very well off and, you know, probably kind of, you know, got some other positive qualities as well.

But it's really funny.

And it's funny because the second you think of that, you think about the female and you think if the girl's really beautiful, you think, oh, well, she's a gold digger or all the other connotations, which then, like, because of the survival of the fittest and all that, is there a lot of jealousy with women?

Because it's only a certain amount, like of that stuff we're talking about, there is a limited amount of great guys that we all want.

Like, I've done a few podcasts on this, where, just in terms of just on the dating apps, right?

Yeah, it's like 1%

of the men get 99%

of the action, right?

Yeah.

Because women want

who are

six foot, make over $100,000, all these things,

where it doesn't leave a very big amount of

men.

Right.

But there's a lot of women out there.

Yes.

Right?

Yes.

And women are naturally caddy.

Yes.

Right.

I think that there's an element of that.

That's very true.

Yes.

Yes.

An element or more than one element.

Yes.

Multiple elements.

Yeah.

So, you know, with any resource that's desirable, there's only so many, right?

Or else it wouldn't be desirable.

Supply, yeah.

You know, supply and demand, it's like there's only so many houses on the water, you know, there's only so many attractive mates.

There's only so many top positions in the job.

Yeah.

And so there's always going to be an element of competition.

And for women, especially when we're talking about mate-related things, one of the primary areas in which they compete is attractiveness.

And so here you have women who kind of size each other up, right?

And then they can be really terrible to one another when they're trying to compete in the same pool.

And I mean, I've found, I remember when I was in my 20s and how much of that there would be, you know, this like, like rivalry and that sort of thing.

And then like once I was married and had children, like it allowed me to have friendships with women in ways that I hadn't been able to have.

Right.

You know, when I was in my 20s, because I think that like that people were paired off kind of took the pressure off of them.

They didn't find you to be a threat.

Right, exactly.

Right.

Exactly.

Because you were taken, you were already like,

you were dormant in their way.

Like you were kind of like

your things were suppressed, right?

Right.

Yeah.

Well, no, it was really interesting because I've also, I'm, I've been divorced and now I'm married again.

And during that period when I was divorced, I mean, talk about a polarizing event

people's lives.

Well, I mean, you know, when you are a person who is with a bunch of married people, right, you live in a community of married people who you spend a lot of time with.

And then all of a sudden, you know, you're not a married person you become very much a threat um to do they offer everybody

yeah there was a lot of that that that happened i kind of got i kind of got shoved out i got a little bit of the exit stage left

so then what happened then well so what happened i found my new community i mean you know was your new community all single women yeah it was mostly single women and uh yeah and it was it was a totally you know and it was a really freeing you know experience to go through that.

It was, it was terrible to lose.

I lost some people that I thought were really good friends.

But I think that, you know, it was like, on the one hand, I understood it.

Yeah.

If anyone would, it would be you.

Yeah, well, exactly.

And so it's like, you know, I'd have, I didn't, at first I was, I was hurt and angry.

And then afterwards, I was, I had a little bit of reflection on it.

And it's like, you know, I under, I mean, there's two things going on there.

It's like, one, you know, you don't want to have this single person that that's a threat.

But it's also a threat to, I mean, marriage is kind of held together by bubblegum and shoelaces, you know what I mean?

It's like it's like a it's like

it's a hard thing to do, you know, it's like really hard to do, and stay.

And so, the idea that somebody can just like walk away from it and be okay, because I was, I like walked away, and um, and you know, and my, and my ex-husband and I, and in some ways, it's even more threatening.

He and I are great, and like we're great co-parents, and we do Thanksgivings together, and you know, we call it the web of love.

And because

um, like 17 years.

So I was married a long time.

And how old were the kids when you got the divorce?

I want to say 12 and

9.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

And yeah, so

to have somebody who we, you know, I walk away from a marriage and I'm okay.

And financially, I'm fine because I'm, you know, I'm taking care of my business.

And then to be able to get along well with my ex-husband.

And I feel like that also feels threatening to marriage.

Do you know what it is?

Really?

Why?

Because marriage is hard and horrible sometimes.

And you know, and being somebody who's married again, it's like, and we, we talk about this.

My, my husband was, is, was also formerly married.

And it's, it's like really hard to be married.

I mean, it's like sometimes you're just like, this is terrible.

Like, this is a really terrible thing, but but you persevere.

And the idea of like, you know, when you're having one of those moments of marriage being terrible, to see people walking away from it and being just fine, I mean, that feels really threatening.

Like, oh my gosh, should I be like, like, that might be the, and, and that is like, you don't want to go down that rabbit hole.

Nobody wants to have to sit and think about whether their marriage is a good idea or a bad idea.

I mean, it's like, it's a really scary thing.

It was, it was a hard thing.

I think also it makes people like think to themselves, like, like, they're jealous a little bit.

Like, I wish I could do that.

Why can't I do that?

Like, will I be okay?

Or, or they feel trapped because financially they're trapped.

Right.

Like, there's all these other them issues that

you are basically,

you're basically making them have to you're forcing them to look at well right and i think that that is i think that that was like i think that's the biggest i think you just hit the nail on the head i mean honestly it's like how many people are in in in and my ex-husband and i had a pretty lovely relationship for the most part we just kind of grew in different directions yeah and so like there's a lot of people who are in marriages a lot worse than ours was yeah and then you know and then to and you're the one who got

yes and so i think that there was a lot of that too so i've like I said, studying what I study, I have a lot of compassion for how everybody responded to me.

And it was really hurtful at first, but I do feel compassion and I understand why that happened.

Right.

And then I was able to find my new community.

And so when you're now in the new community and you guys are all single, like you were saying, was there...

cattiness and jealousy because you're all in the same boat and look like, oh, she's going on a date.

Why can't I go on a date?

Was there any of that?

No, what's really interesting is no.

And so with my really tight group of girlfriends, no.

And

we actually would trade notes.

Like we had a spreadsheet when we were dating.

Really?

Yes.

Where it was like, to make sure, like, did you go out?

And it's like, oh, wait, I know I went out with him.

No, he's great for you.

And so like, we would even like set people up on the side, like on side chat with people that we would go out with.

And then, but they didn't match up on the app or whatever with the other person.

I love that because you know what, you're meeting these people.

And like, yeah, maybe they're not right for you, but you have Sally out there who you'd be great for.

Yes.

And in fact, one of our pictures that we had was all three of us together.

Like, cause there was three of us that spent most of our, there was five of us, but there's three of us that were actively dating.

And so we had a picture of all three of us.

And then it was like, if it doesn't work out with one of us, you can have the other two.

I love that.

That's like a three per.

Yeah.

And I think that there's something about, you know, because we were all in our, you know, we were all in our early 40s or late 30s, early 40s when we met.

And I think that there's also something where as you get older, in addition to, you know, just like whether you're partnered or not, it's like, I think there's really a time that you can appreciate just how amazing female friendship is that I don't think you get when you're in your 20s.

Yeah, I think you're right.

Cause I think there's a different, like.

Your priorities change, you soften up a little bit.

You know, there's other things that happen.

How long have you been married to this new husband?

Oh my God.

Well, we've been together for three years.

We're just recently, recently married.

Yeah.

Oh, congratulations.

Thanks.

You're welcome.

And so he's got kids too?

Yes, he does.

Yeah.

So we've got a blended family of five kids.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

No, thank you.

No, and I say thankfully, but no, really, they're all wonderful.

They're older.

I mean, so like, you know, the oldest is, you know, about to graduate college.

The second oldest is a freshman in college.

And then, you know, our youngest are both freshmen in high school.

So it's not like we have all of these, you know, like so much chaos going on in our right, right, right.

But it's interesting because you've like lived all these different part, like just different stages of life that you can talk on.

So then you were on the apps.

Yeah, I was.

So how did you find the apps?

So I found the app.

So it's funny because my first exposure to the apps was when I was in graduate school at UT Austin, way back in the day.

I was like 2001.

And I was actually writing a research paper on mate preferences.

And it was before there were apps, but it was like when like match.com was a thing and it was like a website.

And so I remember going there and like, you know, I was doing a project looking at what are some of the qualities that men compared to women say that they're looking for in partners.

And, you know, and then like did a quantification.

And lo and behold, you know, men were more likely to say they were looking for looks and women were more likely to say they were looking for financial stability or some version of that.

And so that was like my very first exposure.

And then, you know, and I was dating my, that, my, what ended up being my husband during that.

So I wasn't like on the, you know, on that.

But then, you know, I had because of the work that I do, I mean, I'm very familiar with what everybody is doing with the apps forever and sort of monitoring that because it's like something that.

I've been really interested in, you know, understanding relationships and

sex and dating dynamics.

And so looking at the apps, I mean, I wasn't like looking at the apps when I was married, but just having awareness of them and like what they were and what people were doing.

Yes.

Almost something that I'd always

research.

Yeah.

I mean, totally.

It was like I had my finger finger on the pulse of it.

And then, um, and then when I got divorced, and then when it was like, you know, I don't even, I'm trying to remember how I found out like what all the kids were using.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think, I think that I had, I feel like I read something.

Like, how wonky is this?

I think I read it in like the Wall Street Journal, you know, like what, like what people were using.

And I think that that's how I found like Bumble.

Is that what you're using?

And that's what I was on.

And then Hinge for a little bit.

But then, yeah, then I ended up dating the person.

I mean, I dated a few different guys, but then I ended up in the relationship with my now husband.

And so then it's all she wrote.

The rest is historic.

The rest of the sisters.

Yes, I'm very happy.

Okay.

Are you happy you went through the divorce?

Yeah, you know, I don't, it's hard to say that, right?

So yes, it was the right decision.

Do I hate it for my kids?

Like, do I, would I prefer for them not to have to visit both of us?

Yeah, I would prefer that.

I do, I will say that I think that I think that of anybody that I know who's in a divorced relationship, I think mine is incredibly healthy.

And like I said, we like my ex and I, like, he came over for Christmas to my husband's house.

And I mean, it's just like, this is the way that we do things.

And

everybody's cool with it.

And I feel like my kids get the experience of being able to see their, that their parents still love and care for each other, even though they're not married.

And so that's like, I guess, on the positive side.

But, and I can also tell myself, like, I think it's better for my kids to see me flourishing and not feeling, you know, like I'm in a, in a bad spot.

And it, like I said, it wasn't, we didn't fight or anything.

I just wasn't happy.

And I think, and it showed, and I was at working all the time.

So I didn't want to be, you know, it was, it was, that was not good.

And so, yeah, I guess the answer is that yes, I'm, it was the right decision.

Um, but it's, it's hard to say like, yes, about something because I, of course, it hurt my kids.

And that was hard.

Yeah.

I mean, even if the most amicable divorce is still a divorce with the kids for the kids, right?

Exactly.

They're going to go back and forth at the homes.

Yes, exactly.

And that's what they do.

And would they prefer not to do that?

Yes, they would.

They would prefer if we were still together.

Right.

But that being said, they're also like, you know, they're learning some resilience with all of this.

And like I said, I think that of anybody I know who's got a divorce set up, I think ours is really a nice one.

And I think that the kids have been able to learn a lot from it.

Good answer.

Thanks.

You're welcome.

I think I got sidetracked there because I was like, I was so interested in your life.

let's just talk about your life yeah let's talk about life well i i i know that at the beginning i asked you a question and i think that we kind of like didn't finish it which was well it's like the five things that birth control can can change or how yeah it's not just this your partner choice but there's other things too it does yes and that's the part that i i didn't finish with sorry no that's okay do you want me to start it off yes okay so let's talk about some of the things that birth control does besides just influencing potentially partner choice.

We also know from research that it affects sexual desire, which I think I alluded to.

It's like it really can put women on sexual lockdown in a lot of cases.

It increases the risk of developing depression or anxiety.

And this is particularly true for younger women.

So they've done studies where they look at the risk of developing major depressive disorder based on whether or not you're using hormonal birth control or not.

And what you tend to see is that the risk is increased for everybody of developing one of those types of outcomes from using hormonal birth control, but it's especially great for young women.

So, women 19 and younger whose brains are still developing, the risk of developing a major depressive disorder and the risk of suicide risk attempt and successful suicide attempt are significantly greater for teens who use hormonal birth control compared to those who do not.

There's also now research showing that if you're using hormonal birth control during your teen years, so again, 19 and younger, that this is associated with a greater risk of developing major depressive disorder across your lifetime, even after you go off the birth control pill, because it seems that it's probably influencing brain development.

And so, the important message here with depression and anxiety is: one, if you go on hormonal birth control, keep an eye on yourself.

Have somebody that you love keep an eye on you.

Because the fact is, when we're depressed or anxious, our brain doesn't say, like, gosh, you know, I'm depressed or anxious, and I bet it's my drugs.

Instead, what happens is we think, like, God, my life sucks right now.

Like, my boss hates me.

My boyfriend hates me.

Like, it's like, we feel like all of these things are happening and we feel bad.

Right.

We don't really, we don't actually think, gosh, I'm depressed.

Right.

And so it's good to acknowledge what's really happening.

Yeah, no, it's like our brain has no idea.

You know, it just makes up stories about what's going on.

And so having somebody know that you're going on it so they can keep an eye on you is incredibly important because then they can tell you if you're having a personality change, if you seem low, if you seem off, right?

These are things that might can tell you that your birth control might not be working for you in that way.

And this is particularly true, as I said, for these young girls.

And, you know, I think that it's smart to avoid going on hormonal birth control, if at all possible, until you're 20 or older, just because your brain is going to have most of its development done at that time, which means that it won't have a long-term lasting impact on you.

But if you are going to go on it when you're younger than 20, really,

really take care and make sure that somebody's keeping an eye on you just because the risk of developing a mental health related side effect is so high and pronounced in this group.

So that's another thing that hormonal birth control can do.

Another thing that surprises people is that it can actually decrease your ability to put on muscle mass from weight training.

And this happens because it keeps your testosterone levels low.

And testosterone plays an important role in terms of prompting the biological cascade that allows you to put on lean muscle mass.

And so women who are doing weight training, doing the exact same regimen compared to women who are naturally cycling, they put on significantly less lean muscle mass compared to their naturally cycling counterparts, which is surprising to a lot of people.

Well, you know what?

It's not that surprising to me because they do say that there's weight gain with being on the pill.

And a lot of people don't want to go on the pill.

I was one of them at a very young age because I was scared of gaining weight.

So that makes sense to me because your testosterone will be suppressed.

You won't be, the less lean muscle mass you have, the less calories you're going to burn.

Therefore, you know, you won't be burning as much.

Yeah, no, for sure.

Yeah, no, for sure.

That makes sense.

100%.

Yeah, 100%.

And then it also can influence your ability to regulate stress.

And this is another one that's really surprising to people.

And that is that when you go on hormonal birth control, there's research that finds that it decreases your body's ability to respond in a dynamic way to stress, potentially leaving you less able to be able to regulate your emotional responses to things and also being less able to cope from and learn from stress.

And so, there's research that shows, for example, that women who use hormonal birth control, that rather than having a big spike in cortisol that all of us get when we're feeling stressed out, which a lot of people, you know, give a bad rap.

And cortisol gets kind of a bad rap because it's, you know, if you have it, chronic exposure to cortisol, it's not good.

But having big bursts of cortisol when we're stressed out is actually very adaptive.

And it's like part of how our body helps to manage stress and cope with stress.

And so, like, when cortisol gets released, it dumps fat and sugar into the bloodstream so we can make a quick getaway.

It primes the birth of new neurons in our hippocampus, which is the brain area that helps us learn and remember things.

And so, it gets us ready to be able to recover from stress, to be able to learn from stress, and to be able to sort of move on with our lives.

And research finds that women who are using hormonal birth control that rather than having this nice big response of cortisol in response to stress, they have a really flat, blunted response to cortisol in response to stress.

And this is something that we only tend tend to see in people who've suffered from PTSD or things like exposure to childhood trauma.

They have these blunted cortisol types of responses.

And you also see this in women who are using hormonal birth control.

And it suggests that it has some sort of dysregulatory pattern within the stress response.

And, you know, nobody knows exactly what it is.

But what researchers think is going on is that the synthetic progesterone in birth control pills, which is called a progestin, it doesn't perfectly match the progesterone receptor, which is the receptor in the cell that picks up the hormone.

And it also gets picked up by other things, including sometimes testosterone and including sometimes cortisol.

And so, what researchers think goes on is that these molecules are stimulating cortisol receptors and making the brain think that it's in a a state of chronic stress, like chronic uncontrollable stress, and that that's causing the stress response to shut down, which isn't good.

It's not good for anybody.

It's bad for emotional regulation.

It's bad for mental health.

And like I said, it's something that we tend to see in people who have who have PTSD.

And so not something that's positive for women who are using hormonal breath control.

Wow.

So as an adolescent, if you're listening or parents listening, what is an alternative just besides doing the, what we talked about earlier?

Copper IUD.

Yeah,

besides doing the copper IUD, that's really, that's the best alternative.

I mean, yeah, as far as I'm concerned, you know, doing something, especially with a teenager that's non-hormonal is going to be the way to go.

Yeah.

Copper IUD is a good one.

I don't recommend the fertility awareness method for teenagers because, you know, just the idea of tracking your cycles and only using condom, like the idea of a teenager trying to do that effectively, it just gives me chills.

I just imagine.

So, I mean, we just aren't left with a lot of options.

And so, one of the big messages from, you know, that I've wanted to really communicate with my book is not like, oh, you know, the birth control pill is evil and all this.

Instead, it's, we need more options.

Like this is imperfect.

Like this is imperfect and we need to have more choices.

Because the fact is, especially for young girls whose brains are developing and are very sensitive to hormones, like we don't have a lot of good options.

No, I mean, at all.

But the thing that that's, and that's probably why also you wanted to write this book, I saw, right?

Because it's, you had your own, you had your own story.

Once you got off of birth control, you were a different person.

You were making playlists and you were like,

I was like, yeah, I felt alive and I was, I felt sexy.

And I just, yeah, it's just like, it was like an awakening in a lot of ways.

Yeah.

I mean, I find that so, like, you don't, that's why I like, I love this conversation with you because I never really, I never really spoke about the correlation between, we talk a lot about HRT on here, right?

Like hormone replacement therapy when you're older, right?

But we don't talk about the hormones that we are putting in our bodies at a younger age to suppress.

Right.

Or we only talk about the opposite.

Right.

Yeah.

And it's really interesting because, you know, people tend to assume that like, oh, you know, hormone therapy, like you must be anti-hormone therapy.

And I'm like, no, like, I think hormones are great.

Like, I think the problem, you know, that with the birth control pill is it, is that you're not getting exposure to hormones.

You're suppressing your hormone.

You're suppressing them.

Right.

Hormones are wonderful.

They're a wonderful thing.

It's a different thing, right?

You're either at a young age or because of for birth control, you're suppressing them, but at an older age, you're trying to increase them to balance yourself out.

Right.

So you don't, so you don't really do any work on that, right?

On the studies of like.

No, I mean,

I definitely have awareness of this space.

Like I know about the research in the space.

And I can say that, you know, there's a lot of women who are giving birth, who are being given birth control pills as a way to ease the menopausal transition instead of being given micronized progesterone and estrogen.

Yeah.

And which

I think is terrible just because the synthetic progesterone in birth control pills that progestin isn't biologically identical to progesterone the way that micronized progesterone is.

And because of that, you don't get many of the really beautiful benefits that progesterone has for the body, including the release of this really nice neurosteroid called allopregnanolone.

And it's something that gets released when progesterone is being broken down in the body.

And it stimulates these receptors in our brain that are known for making us feel calm and relaxed.

And it's really good for us.

Like it promotes neuroplasticity, which means that it makes our brain plastic and malleable and able to respond to things and not, you know, freak out.

And it's, it's associated with having better mental health and all these other really beautiful things.

And women who are using synthetic.

hormones, you know, this progestin, that because it's made out of testosterone, it's not made out of progesterone.

You don't get this beautiful metabolite that has all these wonderful benefits to the brain and benefits to mental health and also benefits to bone health because progesterone and estrogen work together to help to create new osteoblasts in the bone and help to strengthen bones and do all these really nice things.

And I think that there's a lot of doctors out there who are just, you know, because they're comfortable with the birth control pill, they're just like giving women that to try to prevent them from not experiencing the symptoms of the menopausal transition.

But

the women that aren't getting all the benefits that you get from actual hormones.

I've never even heard that before.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

No, I hear about this.

I, I, so, you know, of course, women reach out to me, but there are questions.

And one of the questions questions I get a lot is about the use of birth control in menopause and like whether or not, you know, that's recommended.

And is it the same as using hormone therapy with, you know, biologically identical hormones?

And, you know, the answer is no, because you don't get all those great benefits.

And it does, you know, tend to have this side effect profile that's really unfavorable to women.

Wow.

Thanks for telling me that.

Yeah.

I had no idea.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well, Sarah, thank you for being on the podcast.

Yeah.

Thank you for having me.

This is so fun.

This was so fun.

Did I miss anything?

Is there anything else we should talk about?

I don't think so.

I think we talked about things I didn't even think we're going to talk about.

I know your personal life.

We're talking about my personal life.

I know.

Thank you for sharing.

I think a lot of people can relate to that too.

I think it's real life.

And it's, yeah.

I'm...

somebody that like is very much someone who's interested in like the nitty-gritty of someone.

Beyond all this other stuff, I wanted to get to know you as a as a person.

So thanks.

Yeah, no, thanks for having me.

Where do people find you or more information on what you're doing or your book?

Yes, of course.

You can find me

on all social platforms, and I'm at Sarah E.

Hill PhD.

And that's Sarah with an H.

So Sarah E.

Hill PhD.

And my website is saraehill.com.

And my book, This Is Your Brain on Birth Control, is sold everywhere that books are sold.

And you can also find my new book that'll be coming out in September called The Period Brain in September.

I didn't know that.

Thank you guys.

Go follow Sarah.

She's awesome.

Thanks.