Weight Loss Drugs and Their Lesser Known Side Effects on Relationships

When Jeanne began to seriously consider taking Zepbound, one of the new-generation weight-loss drugs, she had the briefest of conversations with her husband, Javier.They were in their bedroom at the time, hastily dressing and brushing teeth during that compressed morning interval before their 12-year-old son left for school and Jeanne’s workday began.

The exchange was not so much a discussion as the routine conveyance of domestic data, along with the Costco shopping list.“I’d like to try this,” Jeanne said to Javier.“OK,” Javier said.For both Jeanne and Javier, the decision was easy.Jeanne, who is 53, has struggled with her weight since fifth grade, and blood work from a recent physical exam indicated the worsening of fatty-liver disease.

“That was the catalyst,” Javier told me, standing in the large kitchen of their comfortable house in New England, where through a picture window an empty hammock swung wildly in the freezing January wind.From her study nearby, Jeanne was audible on a conference call.

At the time of their decision, in late 2023, the effects of the drug were still conceptual, and Javier’s perspective was uncomplicated.He was “all in,” he said.

Javier, who is also 53, regards himself as a “glass half full” kind of person, with a deep drive to be helpful to others and a steady support to his wife.“It never occurred to me to ask, Well, what does this mean for us?”Jeanne took her first dose of Zepbound on March 7, 2024.

Since then, she has lost 60 pounds; a recent liver scan showed no signs of disease.Jeanne now uses words like “life-changing” and “miraculous” to describe the results.

But neither Jeanne nor Javier (who asked to use their middle names to protect their privacy) could have anticipated the upheaval her use of the medication would create in their 15-year marriage — a disruption that has not just radically changed her weight and her appetites but has also seemingly forced a total renegotiation of t...