Health & Sex

Pill Users Choose 'Wrong' Sex Partners

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Herz says marriage counselors who have never heard about these studies tell her that the No. 1 complaint among women no longer sexually interested in their husbands is that they can no longer stand how he smells.

"If you can't stand how someone smells, you cannot become intimate," Herz says.

Does this mean the birth control pill is a divorce pill? Herz says it's not that simple.

"A woman's response to a man's natural body odor will be colored by her feelings for him," she says. "So if you fell in love with a man online, it would be hard to be repelled by his smell."

Roberts and colleagues report their findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

(What do you think determined your choice of partner? Talk with others on WebMD's Couples Coping message board.)