What are patients seeing on social media about physical attraction and birth control?
Trending videos are promoting the idea that hormonal birth control fundamentally changes who people are attracted to. Some examples include:
- “I came off the pill and realized I was never attracted to my partner.”
- Charts and infographics claiming the pill makes people choose “less masculine,” “less compatible,” or “low-testosterone” partners.
- Male influencers warning that hormonal birth control “tricks” people into dating the “wrong” person or ruins relationships long-term.
These posts often cherry-pick small, older psychology studies, ignore newer data, and frame hormonal contraception as sabotaging attraction and partnership choices. These videos, and the research used to support the claims, are also highly heteronormative and often actively promoted by anti-contraception groups.
What’s the evidence around physical attraction and birth control?
Where this myth came from
- Earlier research in evolutionary psychology suggested that hormonal contraceptives might affect preferences for certain traits, like facial “masculinity”. Small studies and lab tasks (rating faces, smelling T-shirts) found modest differences in some groups of pill users.
- These findings were heavily amplified in media and online wellness spaces, often translated into sweeping claims that “the pill changes who you’re attracted to” or that it leads to less “genetically compatible” or “less masculine” partners.
What newer studies show
More recent, larger studies paint a different picture:
- A 2018 paper found no evidence that women’s preferences for facial masculinity track natural hormonal fluctuations or are meaningfully altered by oral contraceptive use.
- A 2019 study similarly found no compelling evidence that oral contraceptive users have weaker preferences for “masculine” men compared with non-users.
- A recent randomized, placebo-controlled trial in Evolution and Human Behavior reported no significant differences in preferences for masculinity or symmetry in male faces between women taking a combined oral contraceptive and those on placebo.
Together, these studies undercut the idea that hormonal contraception produces large, systematic changes in who someone finds attractive. The strongest available evidence suggests that hormonal birth control does not reliably change who someone is attracted to.
Citations
- Going Off the Pill Could Affect Who You’re Attracted to, Study Finds. Time. Published November 20, 2014. https://time.com/3596014/attraction-sex-birth-control/
- Jones BC, Hahn AC, Fisher CI, et al. No Compelling Evidence that Preferences for Facial Masculinity Track Changes in Women’s Hormonal Status. Psychol Sci. 2018;29(6):996-1005. doi:10.1177/0956797618760197
- Marcinkowska UM, Hahn AC, Little AC, DeBruine LM, Jones BC. No evidence that women using oral contraceptives have weaker preferences for masculine characteristics in men’s faces. PLoS One. 2019;14(1):e0210162. Published 2019 Jan 10. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0210162
- Ranehill E, Niklas Zethraeus, Apicella CL, et al. Oral contraceptives and women’s preferences for facial masculinity and symmetry: Evidence from a double-blind randomized controlled trial. Evolution and Human Behavior. 2025;46(5):106713-106713. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2025.106713
- S. Craig Roberts, Cobey KD, Kateřina Klapilová, Havlíček J. Oral Contraception and Romantic Relationships—from the Lab to the Real World. Human ethology bulletin. 2014;29(3). doi:https://doi.org/10.22330/001c.89817
- Tenbarge K. Conservative influencers are pushing an anti-birth control message. NBC News. Published July 1, 2023. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/birth-control-side-effects-influencers-danger-rcna90492
Talking with patients about physical attraction and birth control
Get curious:
If a patient says, “I saw that the pill changes who you’re attracted to,” or “I heard if I stop my birth control I won’t be attracted to my partner anymore,” try:
Can you tell me more about what you saw or heard that brought this up for you?
Are there any changes you’ve noticed in how you feel—about sex, your mood, or your relationship—since starting this method?
This can help separate attraction, libido, mood, and relationship stressors rather than treating them as one issue.
Acknowledge concerns & normalize:
A lot of people are seeing those videos and wondering the same thing. It makes sense that you’d want to understand what’s going on.
Your experience of your relationship and your body matters. It’s totally reasonable to ask whether birth control could be playing a role.
Normalizing opens the door to a more nuanced, evidence-based conversation rather than a yes/no myth-busting moment.
Clarify with evidence and empathy
We don’t have strong evidence that hormonal birth control changes who you’re attracted to or makes you choose the ‘wrong’ partner. The big, higher-quality studies don’t show that kind of effect.
We do know that some people notice changes in mood or sex drive on certain methods, and those changes can affect how satisfied you feel in a relationship. That’s something we can talk through and adjust for.
When appropriate, gently reframe the online narrative:
A lot of the videos are based on small lab studies where people rate photos on a screen. That’s not the same as physical attraction in real relationships, and newer, larger studies don’t show the same patterns.
If a patient links their relationship concerns to a method
- Review timeline: When did the method start vs when did concerns arise? Were there other changes like new stress, postpartum period, mental health shifts?
- Emphasize method flexibility:
If you feel like this method isn’t a good fit—whether that’s because of mood, sex drive, or just your gut—we can look at other options. My goal is to help you find something that feels right in your life and relationships.
Diving deeper
For patients who are worried they’ve “chosen the wrong partner because of birth control”:
- Normalize that attraction in long-term relationships fluctuates for many reasons—stress, conflict, parenting, trauma, mental health—not just hormones.
- Important message to leave patients with:
Your contraception should support your life—not control it. We don’t see clear evidence that it changes who you’re attracted to, but we do care about how you feel while taking it, and we can adjust.
Key takeaways
- Current evidence does not support the claim that hormonal birth control fundamentally “rewires” who someone is attracted to or makes them choose the “wrong partner.” Large, newer studies find no meaningful differences in preferences for facial masculinity or cycle-linked shifts among hormonal contraceptive users vs non-users.
- Viral content often overstates early, small lab studies and ignores limitations like sample size, heteronormative assumptions, and lack of real-world outcomes.
- Attraction and relationship satisfaction are multi-factorial. Relationship dynamics, stress, mental health, pain, sleep, and other meds often play as big or bigger a role than contraceptive method.