Do you think birth control pills have affected your relationships?

A recent study found that women who are using birth control pills at the time they met their partner tended to:

1. Experience lower sexual satisfaction with their partner: women using the pill rated their partners lower on measures of sexual arousal, adventurousness, and attraction, and said they were less likely to initiate sex.

2. Experience greater general satisfaction: women using the pill said their partners were better at providing financially, and they also tended to rate their partners as more intelligent and more supportive.

3. Experience longer relationships, and a lower rate of separations.

So, the upshot was that women on the pill found their partners less sexy, but better partners otherwise, and tended to have longer relationships that were less likely to end.

What do you think? Have you ever noticed trends like this in your own dating experiences?

(For more background reading, if anyone’s interested: women’s preferences for some male behaviors changes across the menstrual cycle, as do preferences for scent, and facial preferences. Women tend to prefer men with dissimilar major histocompatibility complexes, except when they use hormonal contraception.)