Can antidepressants numb love?
Has anyone tested whether SSRIs dull love? What the studies found, whether lost romantic feelings can last after stopping, and what you can do.
Feelings for your partner gone flat on an antidepressant? These medicines may dull romantic love in some people, but the few studies disagree.
Some people say their feelings for a partner stayed flat after they stopped, as part of post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD), a condition that can last after stopping.
Losing feelings for someone you love is easy to blame on the relationship. If the medicine plays a part, it helps to know that before ending one.
Katie’s interview is worth 10 minutes if you’re wondering whether this is you. She explains how crushes and romance simply stopped, and how that differed from depression.
Before Prozac, Katie says, she “experienced romance and other emotions easily”. She took it for about three years from the age of 21.
Afterwards she noticed she wasn’t developing any crushes. Even at her lowest point before Prozac, she says, she “still had feelings”. “I have tried to have relationships several times as an adult,” she says, “but it doesn’t work because of PSSD.” She has lived with it for about 14 years.
So can a medicine really quieten love, and can that last?
Can antidepressants stop you feeling in love?
It hasn’t been settled. The idea began as a hypothesis. In a 2007 book chapter, the anthropologist Helen Fisher and the psychiatrist J. Anderson Thomson proposed that people on these medicines “can potentially jeopardize not only their sex drive” but also romantic love and attachment to a partner. They first put the idea to a psychiatry meeting in 2004.
Their reasoning came from brain research. Being in love is linked with dopamine, the brain’s reward chemical, they wrote. Raising serotonin, which is what SSRIs do, can damp dopamine down. So, they argued, a medicine that lowers sex drive may also quieten love.
They gave examples. A student on an SSRI said, “I have not been as much in love with my boyfriend.” Her dose had just been raised. A man wrote to a newspaper that his romantic feelings for his wife had dropped sharply on the medicine.
In the cases where the medicine was stopped or changed, the feelings came back. The chapter doesn’t mention anyone whose feelings stayed flat after stopping.
Has anyone tested whether SSRIs dull love?
Two studies have looked, and they point in different directions. A 2014 study in Pisa asked 192 people who had taken an SSRI or a tricyclic antidepressant for at least six months about sex, attachment and love. The authors found that SSRIs affected feelings of love and attachment towards a partner, especially in men.
A 2025 survey of young adults found no link. People taking an SSRI reported love about as intense as people who weren’t.
The evidence is thin. The 2007 examples are single cases, and the 2025 survey only asked people who were in love at the time, so anyone who had lost the feeling wasn’t in it.
SSRIs and romantic love: the research so far
Can lost romantic feelings last after stopping?
In Fisher and Thomson’s examples, people who stopped or changed the medicine got their feelings back. For some people with PSSD, like Katie, the loss has lasted years after stopping. Nobody knows yet who will be affected, or whether it will ease.
PSSD is more than sexual problems, despite its name. Its core is a lasting change in genital sensation, often numbness, and the 2022 criteria also describe emotional numbing, problems with cognition and changes in other senses.
The UK leaflet for sertraline says sexual problems have, in some cases, “continued after stopping treatment”. The 2022 criteria for PSSD list emotional numbing among the symptoms that can come with it, alongside the change in genital sensation.
Nick’s interview is long, but the part about his girlfriend shows what this looks like from inside a relationship. It’s background on emotional blunting. It can’t tell us how often this happens.
Nick, whose girlfriend stood by him, says he can still show emotions on his face. “But I don’t feel it,” he says. Victoria, who took Lexapro for about two weeks and then trazodone, lists “no romantic feeling, no attraction” among her symptoms today.
What can I do?
These medicines help many people. If you have side effects, that’s a decision for you and your prescriber. Don’t stop suddenly.
If your feelings for a partner have faded since starting a medicine, or haven’t returned since stopping, say so at your next appointment. Give your dates: “Sertraline 50 mg from January 2023, last tablet March 2024.”
Three questions for your GP
- Could my medicine explain the change in my feelings?
- How can we tell it apart from depression?
- What's our next step if it continues after stopping?
You could start with: "I love my partner, but I can't feel it since the tablets."
If you’re in a relationship, telling your partner what has changed may stop it being read as a verdict on them.
Report it: it helps everyone
A doctor's note helps you. A report to the medicines regulator helps everyone else: it is how patterns get noticed.
- No proof needed. A suspicion is enough, even years after stopping.
- Where: the Yellow Card scheme in the UK, MedWatch in the US.
- Use the right words. If symptoms continued after stopping, write Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (MedDRA 10086208).
What else do people ask?
Do SSRIs always affect love? No. In the 2025 survey, young adults on SSRIs who were in love reported it about as intensely as the others. Fisher and Thomson also wrote that these medicines can help with problems that strain relationships.
Could it be the depression? It can be. Depression can drain the warmth out of a relationship, and feeling flat on the tablets, called emotional blunting, is a known side effect. Timing is one clue: when did the change start? See PSSD or depression?
Is it just a low sex drive? Not always. Sex drive, falling in love and feeling attached to a long-term partner are different things, though they overlap. Katie describes losing several at once. Our article on no sex drive after stopping antidepressants covers the sexual side.
Katie says she remembers what it’s like to have sexual feelings, but she can’t reach them any more. Read her story, and what is known about PSSD.
Sources
- Fisher HE, Thomson JA Jr. Lust, romance, attachment: do the side effects of serotonin-enhancing antidepressants jeopardize romantic love, marriage, and fertility? Chapter 10 in: Platek SM, Keenan JP, Shackelford TK (eds). Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007: 245–283. The authors first presented the idea at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting in May 2004. Case reports (pp. 257, 258, 267–268) include a letter to the New York Times (Frankel, 2004). The chapter also notes that under some circumstances these medicines might strengthen attachment (p. 262).
- Marazziti D, Akiskal HS, Udo M, et al. Dimorphic changes of some features of loving relationships during long-term use of antidepressants in depressed outpatients. Journal of Affective Disorders, 2014; 166: 151–155. 192 outpatients with mild or moderate depression, on one antidepressant (an SSRI or a tricyclic) for at least six months and in a relationship; “Sex, Attachment, Love” questionnaire.
- Bode A, Kowal M, Cannas Aghedu F, Kavanagh PS. 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. Journal of Affective Disorders, 2025; 375: 472–477. 810 young adults from the Romantic Love Survey 2022, all experiencing romantic love at the time. Described here from its title and abstract only; we could not open the full text, and PubMed blocked our re-check on 22 October 2026.
- Healy D, Bahrick A, Bak M, et al. Diagnostic criteria for enduring sexual dysfunction after treatment with antidepressants, finasteride and isotretinoin. International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine, 2022; 33(1): 65–76. Section 3: genital sensory change at the core; emotional numbing, cognitive and other sensory changes also described.
- Lustral (sertraline), patient leaflet, Electronic Medicines Compendium, last revised December 2025. Section 2, “Sexual problems”.
- MedDRA term Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction, code 10086208.
- Moral Medicine interviews on YouTube: Katie (May 2026) and Nick (30 May 2023). Victoria’s words are from her Moral Medicine interview, on her story page.
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