Stopping the pill means many changes for the body – and one woman claims it has changed her sexual preference.
Australian woman Amy May shared her story in an interview about how ‘coming off the birth control pill turned me into a lesbian’ TikTok video.
Amy said she first used the pill when she was 15, but stopped this year after taking it for more than a decade.
She admitted that she was ‘not afraid’ to stop taking the medication after 13 years, but Amy decided to continue because she was coming out of a long-term relationship with her boyfriend of eight years.
“So I was single and obviously not sexually active and thought my body could probably use a break – I had never had a break in 13 years,” she explained in the video.
Amy said she was nervous about some of the common side effects, such as weight gain and skin changes, including acne.
But she was also curious, because friends and family had told her that “you discover who you are when you’re not on the pill.”
‘[So I thought] Yes great, I’m going to find clarity in life,” she recalled, also confessing, “I didn’t think this would actually be like this. [change anything] and I definitely didn’t think I would be attracted to women.”
Australian woman Amy May shared her story of how ‘coming off the birth control pill made me a lesbian’ in a TikTok video
Amy says that after she first stopped taking the medication, she didn’t notice a big change, but she did notice that she felt “lighter in her mood, her energy, and her thoughts.”
“I definitely rode a lot smoother through the highs and lows, if that makes sense,” she said.
“I wasn’t that angry and I think it’s only now that I realize, looking back, I feel like the pill made me very tense, very angry, very, very, snappy,” she continued.
“I don’t have that feeling anymore.”
Around that time, after coming off the pill, Amy said she started thinking “with disgust” about her ex, who is a man.
‘It could be a coincidence, who doesn’t know, but it could have been a combination of coming off the birth control pill and getting out of a toxic relationship, but the way I started looking at my ex was kind of disgusted. could be the person he became again,” she reflected.
“But it could also be because I wasn’t as attracted to men as I used to be.”
In another TikTok video, Amy wrote, “Last December I was in a toxic relationship with a man and had never felt so alone.”
Amy said she first started using the pill when she was 15 and stopped this year after taking it for more than a decade (stock image)
She showed a photo of herself and her girlfriend and wrote: “In December I am in love with a woman and gay.”
Amy’s comments section was flooded with comments from women who said they had been in similar situations.
‘Oh my God, I thought the same thing happened to me and I thought I was just imagining it!!’ one flowed.
‘I was like this at 26 too! I haven’t heard anyone else say this yet. The slow disgust towards men was wild for me too haha,” another commented.
“I (lesbian) am now afraid to stop taking the pill because what if it has the opposite effect for me,” someone else joked.
Sarah Hill, an evolutionary psychologist, said she has heard of other cases where women’s sexual preferences changed after they stopped taking the pill.
‘Decades of research have shown that women’s sex hormones influence their attraction to specific members of one gender. Why wouldn’t this also affect their attraction between the sexes?’ she wrote in an article published on its website in 2020.
“If we’re going to take seriously the idea that gender isn’t as binary as biological sex, then it’s actually not wild at all,” she pointed out.
‘It just goes to show that sex hormones are intimately involved in attraction and that – for some women – the hormonal changes initiated by the birth control pill can fuel their preferences in ways that are more noticeable than for others.’