Is your wife on birth control?

I am dealing with infidelity PTSD 45 years after D-Day.

Following the birth of our first child, my young wife started using birth control pills and continued for about 5 years.

The following is from a book summary of This Is Your Brain on Birth Control: How the Pill Changes Everything (2023) by Sarah Hill:

When Sarah Hill went off the birth control pill after a decade of daily use…. she found herself attracted to different types of men, experiencing emotions she’d forgotten existed, and suddenly passionate about music she hadn’t cared about in years. ….the pill doesn’t just prevent pregnancy—it fundamentally rewires the brain, alters who women are attracted to, changes their stress responses to resemble those of trauma victims, and may even influence whether their future relationships succeed or fail. Yet most women taking hormonal contraceptives have no idea they’re chemically restructuring their personalities, their desires, and potentially their entire futures. Women who chose their partners while on hormonal contraceptives were more likely to initiate divorce when they stopped taking them, suddenly finding themselves unattracted to men they’d married. 

It fits. My WW used contraceptive pills after the birth of our first child until we decided to have a second child (1973-1976) the same period when we were initially estranged and she had an affair.

I knew she had changed, but I put it down to maturing and alienation. I have no doubt hormonal tampering accelerated the decay in our relationship.