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And so when we take the birth control pill, what it does is instead of allowing you to cycle between these two hormones, because you start this big increase in estrogen, which is coordinating all the activities related to sex and conception, because this is the period in the cycle in which sex can lead to conception. And then- How long a period is that? It’s about four, so that period of time is about five to seven days. So about five days prior to ovulation, and then within 24 hours of ovulation during that window, which we call the fertile window, sex can lead to conception. And that’s how many days a month? It’s about five to seven. Yeah, right, okay. So, and then after ovulation, a little temporary endocrine structure forms from the empty egg follicle, and it begins releasing women’s other primary sex hormone, which is progesterone. And when that hormone is being released, it tends to make us sleepier, it makes us hungrier, it lowers our testosterone levels, it does a bunch of things physiologically that are helping prepare women’s bodies for pregnancy, right? And prepare ourselves for the possibility that an egg might implant. And so women generally are less likely to be going out and doing risky things, they’re more likely to avoid contaminants. So women’s disgust sensitivity increases. There’s all of these things that go on that are essentially preparing our bodies for this. That’s when they have maximal post-coital regret. I bet that you’re, yeah, that’s so funny. And so you get this waxing and waning between these two hormones that are organizing our bodies for two different activities, implantation and conception, or pardon me, sex and conception, and then implantation and pregnancy. And we go in between these two states and each of these hormonal states is associated with different types of psychological patterns and physiological patterns. I mean, even they’ve done studies where they scan women’s brains every day across the cycle and take hormone measures. And it’s like, you see things like white matter density increasing when estrogen is high. Spinal, you get new dendritic spines in the hippocampus when estrogen is present. And then these things retreat when you’re under the control of progesterone. And so we experience all these changes. I mean, that’s a very normal part of being a woman. And when you take the birth control pill, what it does is you get a daily dose of a relatively low level of synthetic estradiol, so estrogen, and a relatively high level of synthetic progesterone, which is called a progestin because it’s not biologically identical. And this mimics the state that a woman’s body is in during that second half of the menstrual cycle when conception isn’t possible. And what this does is it sends a signal to the hypothalamus not to stimulate the ovaries to produce a new egg because it’s essentially waiting to see what happens with the one that was just ovulated. And so when you’re taking the pill, you get the same daily dose every day of this synthetic hormonal state that’s kind of keeping you in- So in principle, in principle, the body’s reacting as if the woman has been sexually satiated in the most fundamental way. She might be pregnant. She might be pregnant, essentially, is what that is saying. And so one of the logical consequences of that would be, correct me if I’m wrong, she should be less interested in sex. But then this also ties into the change in her preference for men. So let’s talk about that a little bit. Well, one of the things that really shocked me when I came across this probably 10, 15 years ago was that there was pronounced variability in the faces that women found attractive across the menstrual cycle. And so if you take photographs of the same man and you widen or narrow the jaw, widen jaws is a sign of more classically dominant. It’s the wrong way of thinking about it. Competent, confident, masculine faces, you can do it with the same man. And the women who are in their most fertile periods prefer the wider jawed men. The 40 days leading up to Easter, Lent starts on Ash Wednesday. That’s February 14th. This is a time of intense prayer, fasting, and giving. Hallow’s annual Pray 40 Challenge is one of their most popular. Last year, over one million people joined. This year’s Pray 40 Challenge focuses on surrender and includes meditations on the powerful book, “‘He Leadeth Me.” This is a story about a priest who became a prisoner and slave in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. His story is one of ultimate surrender. And we are called to offer up our own worries, anxieties, problems, and lives to God. There will also be Lent music, Lent-specific Bible stories, and other Lenten prayers, like the seven last words of Christ with Jim Caviezel. Download the app for free at hallow.com slash Jordan. You can set prayer reminders and track your progress along the way. Hallow is truly transformative and will help you connect with your faith on a deeper level. So what are you waiting for? Download the Hallow app today at hallow.com slash Jordan. That’s hallow.com slash Jordan. Hallow.com slash Jordan for an exclusive three month free trial of all 10,000 plus prayers and meditations. Okay, so then I thought, oh, this is a problem because it means that women who are on the pill prefer feminine men. Then I thought, that’s a real problem because it might be that women on the pill really don’t like masculine men. Uh-oh, that’s probably a problem because we have a lot of tension between women and men in our society and we have no idea how much that’s driven by the fact that the pill is transforming the manner in which females perceive the most masculine men. I mean, it’s terrifying if that’s the case. Right, no, I mean, it’s very provocative, right? That’s the word I would use. It’s incredibly provocative because research has been showing now for about 20 years that when women are in the point in the cycle when estrogen is high, that that’s associated with an increased preference for testosterone cues. Like you said, vocal, facial, and behavioral masculinity are things that women are really zeroing in on right near high fertility in the cycle. And this of course begs the question, well, then what happens if a woman is on hormonal birth control and is never in the estrogen dominant phase of her cycle? Then what happens? And researchers have since asked that question and what they tend to find is that women who are on hormonal birth control desire a somewhat less masculine male face and male voice. And there’s been some research even showing that if women chose their partners when they’re on hormonal birth control and then discontinue it, that this can lead to changes in how they perceive and how attracted they are to their partner. Yeah, I read that, tell me if this is right, that if they picked an attractive partner, when they’re off the pill, they find them even more attractive, but if they picked a less desirable partner, when they’re off the pill, they find them even less desirable. So it seems to, okay, so that’s right, it magnifies the consequence of their choices. Yeah, it’s like all of a sudden the blinders were off. And so now they can, if they chose somebody who, that they found attractive, because they weren’t really paying that much attention to that or weren’t prioritizing that when they were on the pill, all of a sudden the blinders are off, they see it, they love it, they’re attracted to it, their relationship satisfaction goes up, their sexual desire and their relationship goes up, and if the opposite happens, it’s the opposite. And we just- So do women on the pill pick friends as mates? Oh, interesting, I’ve never seen a study looking at that, but I mean, it wouldn’t be a far stretch to make that prediction, just because it does seem like women who are choosing their partners on the pill, if there’s a pattern that’s found, the pattern is that women are generally zeroing in on qualities that have less to do with sexiness and sexual desire and masculinity, and more zeroing in on things like safety and- Nurture, companionship. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, well, you can see that women have a very, very difficult choice to make, right? Because they wanna pick a guy who can win a competition with other guys, they wanna pick a guy who can keep the psychopaths at bay, they wanna pick a guy who’s productive, but they also need to pick someone who’s generous and capable of forming responsible relationships. Well, you know, talk about a play of opposites, and you could imagine that any shift in hormonal balance is going to skew that in one direction or another. Right, yeah, I mean, partner choice, I always tell my women in my class, and also the men, the few men that are in my class, because it’s a university and it’s all women now, but what I tell them is it’s all about making trade-offs, and sort of which side of the table you’re stacking your coins, are you stacking your coins more on the sort of sexiness, yeah, keeping the psychopaths at bay, kind of masculinity types of qualities, or are you stacking your chips all the way over here of good caregiver, provider, gonna help with the children, are you putting them more toward the middle? Everybody makes a trade-off, and essentially what we do, what our hormones do, is they kind of nudge where we put our stack. Yeah. And what we can see when this happens en masse, as you can see, en masse changes and partner preferences potentially. [“The Star-Spangled Banner”]