Wait, It Gets Worse

Good news, I’ve been able to add to my list of horrific things that will scare me if I ever get married.

Via Jena Pincott, here is what Rachel Write says:

When Karen decided to go off the pill, her relationship wasn’t going well. She had a husband whose depression hung heavy, dampening the air. Karen began noticing a putrid smell, emanating from her husband. “I couldn’t stand to be close to him because he smelled so bad, it wasn’t what we call body odor, it smelled like a soured clothes…so naturally that is what I thought it was.”

But after digging through his laundry, she had a dizzying realization… the smell suffocating her space was her husband.

Karen could no longer muster a simple attraction. Warmth began to dissipate. A divorce ensued. Later, stumbling across research about pheromones and birth control, it clicked.

In Clause Wedekind’s study, women were given t-shirts that had been worn by men. They were asked to smell the shirts to report attraction. They found women were attracted to men with a different MHC level than their own, and repulsed by one too similar. The theory is this delicate difference of pheromones makes the healthiest offspring.

But, oddly women taking oral contraceptives lost this sense of attraction. Not only could she no longer sniff out her best match, she became actively attracted to men with a similar MHC level, closer to her own genes.

When Karen let a male friend vent about a recent break-up, it sounded familiar. “Had she recently gone off the pill?” She asked. When the answer was yes– she was convinced. “That is when I started calling it the divorce pill” Karen says.

So, it turns that if I ever am able to convince a female that I’m worth spending waking and sleeping hours with, there is an infinitesimally small chance she could actually end up not standing me anyway for purely physiologically chemical reasons.

This is akin to the old Brian Regan joke where he explains that while being examined, Regan’s optometrist notifies him that, “You know, your one eye is just slightly lower than the other.  This doesn’t affect your vision or anything; I just wanted you to be self-conscious for the rest of your life.”  Science FTMFW.