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How Birth Control Pills Affect Your Sex Drive in a Relationship

New research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the University of New Mexico looks at the relationship between sex, hormonal contraception, and relationship quality.
Photo by Lauren Naefe via Stocksy

Truly, trying to remember to take your contraceptive pill and why you're pissed off at your partner is no easy thing, which is why I'm single and have a coil. Now a new scientific study into women in good and not-so-good relationships explains how their propensity to have sex is affected depending on the type of pill they're on.

If there's one thing more complicated than a cross-sectional longitudinal scientific study, it's your average relationship: Which makes explaining a cross-sectional longitudinal scientific study into relationship quality no easy thing. Here goes.

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A joint research team between the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the University of New Mexico, led by Professor Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair, examined 387 Norwegian women in heterosexual relationships, all on different variants of hormonal contraception. The women were asked to fill out a questionnaire aimed at evaluating how committed they were to their relationship.

Kennair, the lead author, explains over the phone that they were building on a 2013 study that evaluated the sexual activity of women in committed relationships who weren't on hormonal contraception. In particular, his team wanted to understand a fundamental mystery of human sexuality: Why humans have sex when they're not reproductively fertile.

Read more: 'I Wanted to Die': How Birth Control Pills Can Ruin Your Life

"Most animals only have sex during a specific period, when they are in estrus, the period immediately before ovulation when you're most fertile," Kennair explains. He tells me that the 2013 study found that women who were more invested in their relationship than their partner initiated more sex during a period known as extended sexuality (after ovulation, but before your period, when you're less fertile). In essence, these women used sex as a way to bond with and strengthen their ties to their partners, even if there was no reproductive reason to do so.

Photo by Lucas Saugen via Stocksy

Kennair's team was interested to see if women on hormonal contraception acted in similar ways. "We found women on progesterone-based pills behaved in the same way as women who weren't on contraception," he says. That is to say, women taking progesterone-based contraception would still use the extended sexuality phase to initiate fun, bonding sex with their boyfriends—but only if they felt invested in their relationship with their partner.

"I wouldn't say it's a strategy to keep his interest exactly," Kennair says. "I'd probably use the word 'glue'. But there's definitely an attachment-increasing factor in having stable sexual relations with one's partner."

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Here's the really intriguing bit. Women on estrogen-based contraception were also likely to have more sex during the extended sexuality period, but with one important difference: These women weren't that into their boyfriends. "If you're on an estrogen-based pill, and you're poorly invested in your relationship, the amount of sex you have with your partner also goes up. We don't really know why."

So if you feel distant from your boyfriend, but also inexplicably keen on fucking him—check your pill packet. It might just have the answers you need.