Beyond the Scale: How weight loss drugs are impacting relationships
For many people taking GLP-1 weight loss medications, the physical changes can be significant. But those changes can also bring unexpected challenges to a relationship.
“The physical transformation gets all the attention,” said Deborah Krevalin, a licensed psychotherapist in Connecticut who often shares relationship advice on social media. “The relational fallout is what nobody sees coming.”
Krevalin says as the use of GLP-1 medications has grown, she has seen another issue emerge: how couples adjust when one partner experiences significant weight loss.
“The medications themselves are not breaking up these relationships,” Krevalin said. “What it’s doing is revealing where the foundation was already fragile.”
There is not yet large-scale data showing a connection between GLP-1 use and divorce. Krevalin points instead to research involving people who underwent bariatric surgery and experienced significant weight loss.
“One major Swedish study of over 12,000 patients who experience rapid weight loss found that 14% divorced within six years,” she said. “What I see in my practice is an attachment response in the partner who has not had the change.”
Krevalin says some of the challenges can begin with something as simple as a change in a couple’s routine.
“These medications work by quieting what we call food noise. That sort of constant internal chatter about eating and cravings,” she said.
For couples who have spent years connecting over dinner, drinks, or a shared dessert, changes in appetite and eating habits can also mean changing some of the rituals they once enjoyed together.
“A glass of white wine. The dessert you split after dinner, and when one partner suddenly has no interest in any of that, the other partner doesn’t feel like they just lost a food buddy. They feel like they lost their person,” Krevalin said.
She describes that feeling as an “attachment wound” that can be difficult for couples to identify until it begins affecting their relationship.
Changes can go beyond food and other shared routines.
Krevalin says increased self-confidence or attention from others following weight loss can sometimes create uncertainty or resentment for a partner.
“When your person transforms physically and you have not, your nervous system can actually read that as a threat to the bond, even when nothing has technically happened or gone wrong,” she said.
But a physical transformation does not have to mean the end of a relationship.
“Communication is everything,” Krevalin said.
She recommends couples first identify what has changed, then build new traditions together not centered around food or alcohol, and finally, find your own outlet outside the relationship, whether that is a friend or a therapist.
“The person going through the transformation, they can’t also be the one absorbing all the fear,” Krevalin said.
She says having those conversations can ultimately help couples better navigate the changes together.
“It’s that kind of honesty that not only doesn’t threaten a marriage or a relationship,” Krevalin said. “It’s what holds one together.”
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