Popular antidepressants don’t appear to dull romantic love, study finds

A new study has found that the use of a common type of antidepressant medication is not associated with diminished feelings of romantic love. The research, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, provides the first empirical evidence addressing long-standing concerns that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors might interfere with people’s ability to experience passionate love. The findings suggest that individuals experiencing romantic love who are taking these medications report similar levels of love intensity, obsessive thinking about their partner, commitment, and sexual frequency as those not taking the medications.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are a type of medication commonly prescribed to treat mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety disorders. They work by targeting a specific neurotransmitter in the brain called serotonin. SSRIs achieve this by slowing down the reabsorption of serotonin by nerve cells, which allows more serotonin to be available in the brain.

There had been ongoing speculation and theoretical arguments suggesting that SSRIs might negatively affect romantic love. The idea was that by altering serotonin levels, these medications could potentially diminish the experience of being in love, affecting aspects such as passion, commitment, and even sexual desire within a romantic relationship. Despite these concerns, there was a lack of empirical research directly testing this hypothesis. Until now, no studies had quantitatively examined whether people taking SSRIs actually reported different experiences of romantic love compared to those not taking them.

“For more than 15 years, researchers have confidently stated that SSRIs negatively affect romantic love, but this has never been proven. In 2022, Phil Kavanagh from the University of Canberra and the University of South Australia and I collected the world’s largest dataset of people experiencing romantic love. In that survey, we asked participants if they were taking SSRIs. This gave us the opportunity to finally test this theory,” said study author Adam Bode, a PhD student at the Australian National University.

The survey, called the Romantic Love Survey 2022, included responses from over 1,500 individuals who self-identified as being “in love.” From this larger group, the researchers focused on 810 young adults (aged approximately 18 to 30) who met specific criteria: they had been in love for 23 months or less, and they scored high on a well-established measure of passionate love, called the Passionate Love Scale. These criteria were used to ensure that the participants were truly experiencing the intense, early stages of romantic love rather than a more settled, long-term form of love. The participants came from 33 different countries, although the largest numbers were from South Africa, Poland, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Mexico.

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Participants were asked whether they were currently taking SSRIs. They also answered questions about their biological sex (male or female) and whether they were experiencing moderate to severe symptoms of anxiety, worry, or depression. These factors were considered because they could influence both medication use and feelings of romantic love.

To measure different aspects of romantic love, the researchers used several established questionnaires and single-item questions. The Passionate Love Scale provided an overall measure of the intensity of romantic love, capturing the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects of this experience. Obsessive thinking was assessed by asking participants what percentage of their waking hours they spent thinking about their loved one. Commitment was measured using a subscale of the Triangular Love Scale, which assesses the cognitive decision to maintain the relationship. Finally, the frequency of sex was assessed by asking participants how many times per week they had sex with their partner.

Out of the 810 participants, 76 (about 9 percent) reported taking SSRIs. The statistical analysis revealed that two factors were significantly associated with medication use: biological sex and mental health problems. Males were less likely to be taking these antidepressants than females, and individuals experiencing moderate to severe mental health problems were more likely to be taking them. These findings are consistent with known patterns of antidepressant use.

However, none of the measures of romantic love—intensity of love, obsessive thinking, commitment, or sexual frequency—were significantly associated with antidepressant use. In other words, individuals taking these medications reported similar levels of these romantic love experiences as those who were not taking them. This finding directly challenges the hypothesis that these medications would diminish these aspects of romantic love.

The absence of a link between SSRI use and diminished romantic love did not come as a surprise.

“To be honest, none of the authors were particularly convinced by the theory that SSRIs negatively affect romantic love,” Bode told PsyPost. “It was based on an outdated theory of mammalian reproduction proposed by Helen Fisher 25 years ago. It also made assumptions about the role of serotonin in obsessive thinking about a loved one—a characteristic of romantic love—that we have known to be misguided for more than 10 years.”

“The only thing that surprised us was that there was no difference in frequency of sex between the two groups. Sexual dysfunction is one of the most common side effects of SSRIs, but our measure of sex suggested that if people experience sexual dysfunction, it doesn’t interfere with the number of times per week they engage in sex.”

However, like any study, this one has its limitations. The research focused solely on young adults, most of whom were current students from relatively well-off countries. This means that the results might not apply to people from different age groups or those living in other parts of the world with different economic circumstances. Moreover, the study only asked participants if they were currently taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors without collecting additional details such as the dosage, the length of time they had been taking the medication, or the specific reasons for their prescription. These factors could be important in understanding the full impact of these drugs on love and relationships.

“This was an opportunistic sample,” Bode noted. “All participants were in love. It is possible that some people taking SSRIs experience extreme side effects and fall out of love, and these people weren’t captured in our sample. It will require further research to investigate if such people exist and to understand the experiences they have.”

“We can’t say that SSRIs don’t affect romantic love in some people. There is a portion of individuals who take SSRIs and experience extreme negative side effects like emotional blunting and sexual dysfunction. Our study, however, demonstrates that generally SSRIs don’t have the kind of negative side effects on romantic love that many have suggested. This probably means that, for the majority of people, they don’t need to be worried about SSRIs taking away that ‘spark.'”

Future research could benefit from a design that follows individuals over time, which would help determine if there are any changes in the experience of passionate love as people start or continue taking these medications.

“My co-authors and I are continuing with a number of articles stemming from the Romantic Love Survey 2022,” Bode said. “We’ve learned a lot about romantic love from that dataset, and there’s still more to learn.”

The study, “SSRI use is not associated with the intensity of romantic love, obsessive thinking about a loved one, commitment, or sexual frequency in a sample of young adults experiencing romantic love,” was authored by Adam Bode, Marta Kowal, Fabio Cannas Aghedu, and Phillip S. Kavanagh.