The Myth of the Seven-Year Itch—and Why it’s Actually a FOUR-Year Itch

(originally published by www.SixWise.com)

Marilyn Monroe’s film The Seven-Year Itch perpetuated the idea that many married people get restless seven years into their marriage. Is it true that just around that seven-year mark men and women across the country start longing for infidelity, or at least a little something to spice up their marriage?

As it turns out, the “itch” is certainly there, but it happens a lot sooner for most of us — after just four years of matrimony.

Part of Our Biology?

According to Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at the Center for Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University, and author of “Why We Love,” it’s because of “biological programming” that people get antsy after four years.

She has studied over 60 groups of people, from various cultures around the world (including Australian Aborigines, the Gainj of New Guinea and the Netsilik Eskimos), only to find some striking similarities …

“People around the world tend to divorce during and around the fourth year of marriage,” Fisher says.

The reason, she explains, has not to do with our hidden passions and desires, but rather is simply an expression of our biological desire to reproduce. Fisher says:

“As it turns out, the standard period of human birth spacing was originally four years. We were built to have our children four years apart and I think that this drive to pair up and stay together at least four years evolved millions of years ago so that a man and a woman would be drawn together and stay together, tolerate each other, at least long enough to rear a single child through infancy.”

The tabloids, too, seem to bear this out. Just ask Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, Lance Armstrong and his wife, Kristin, or Madonna and Sean Penn. All of these couples divorced after four years of marriage.

However, there is a slight, somewhat disheartening, caveat. If you break the statistics down further to include just Americans, the peak years for divorce are even under the four-year mark, at years two and three.

“Perhaps it is no coincidence that the American divorce peak corresponds perfectly with the normal duration of infatuation — two to three years,” Fisher says.

If you do make it past the four-year mark (or at least the two- and three-year marks), you’re in luck. Divorce rates decline gradually with each year of marriage that goes by, according to Fisher.

What to Do if You’re Feeling an “Itch” in Your Marriage Read the rest of this entry »