Can you sustain joy and attraction throughout your long term relationship, or is a dip in excitement a given past a certain point?
Jennifer Zamparelli chats to resident relationship therapist Rachel Cooke about the dreaded seven-year itch, and how to stop happiness dropping in your relationship. Listen back above.
When TV host Sue Perkins opened up about struggling to make "something forever" in her relationships, she opened up a conversation about one of love's most dreaded states: the seven-year itch.
Cooke explained that the seven-year itch is a "popular belief sometimes quoted as having psychological backing that marriages or relationships start to decline or end in divorce around the seven-year mark. Generally it's seen as happening due to boredom, restlessness or unhappiness".
The phrase was popularised further when it was used in the title of the play The Seven-Year Itch by George Axelrod, which was adapted in to a film starring Marilyn Monroe in 1959.
While Cooke said that there is "no definitive proof" that it's real, she added that there's also no proof that it isn't real, as research carried out on it has produce varying outcomes depending on the country, people and sample size in the studies.
Boredom is one of the main factors, and as Cooke noted, when you're spending day in, day out with the same one person, feeling somewhat bored is "inevitable".
"That's just life", she said. "But the thing is about how people handle it. Some people really step up and decide, right, we're going to be really intentional about this and work out whether we need to go see a couple's therapist.
"Other people just don't talk about it, let it decline, become more and more awful to each other until it ends."
Cultural approaches to relationships is a key factor here, and one that changes vastly across ages, backgrounds and generations. Are we more willing now to cut and run from relationships we believe aren't serving us anymore?
Divorce has likely become more of an obtainable option for people of any gender, and has become more normalised in general. Cooke said that, thanks to changes in equality when it comes to money and gender, it's easier for women in particular to leave marriages that they are unhappy in, compared to 50 years ago.
"There are still lots of women who feel [they can't leave], either because career has been stalled potentially by having children or it might just be that they're quite financially dependent on their partner's salary. It still can be very hard to leave a marriage or relationship these days. But it is easier."
Added to this is the fact that more people are going to therapy than previous generations, making them more "self-aware" of their wants, needs, hard lines and boundaries, Cooke said. This also means there are more of us who are willing to work on our relationships and dig deep into issues, rather than leave the relationship entirely.
So what should we be looking out for if we're wary of feeling the seven-year itch?
Cooke said it starts with noticing if you have "poorer and poorer communication, lack of empathy for each other".
"Bearing in mind it can be one or both people in a couple that can be experiencing this. It's not necessarily both people at once, though often it is.
"Maybe you now have much more unrealistic expectations of each other. Maybe it's that you have a lack of physical, sexual, emotional intimacy that you used to have. You might have a lot more conflict, maybe you're arguing a lot more and there's a lot of criticism, hurtful words, stonewalling, defensiveness, even contempt towards each other.
"Maybe it's that you're keeping secrets from your partner, or they're keeping secrets from you. You're not spending much or any meaningful time together, you're taking each other for granted or feeling unappreciated, fantasising about cheating ... and you might also feel quite low motivation to improve the relationship."
Of course, these issues aren't exclusive to long term relationships and should be watched out for at all times. Cooke added: "We're calling this the seven-year itch but this could be the case at any point in a relationship. It just tends to happen when you're a few years in."
