What does the seven-year itch mean?

The seven-year itch

The "seven-year itch" is a borrowed term, which means that many things will develop into problems in the seventh year regardless of human will. Marriage Of course there is no exception. After being married for a long time, the novelty is lost. From a romantic love to a real marriage, in the ordinary day and night together, we are so familiar with each other, and the shortcomings that were concealed during love or the differences in concepts between the two parties have been fully exposed at this time. Therefore, emotional "exhaustion" or boredom causes the marriage to enter a "bottleneck". If no effective method can be chosen to pass this "bottleneck", the marriage will end.

From the perspective of human growth, most people realize their own growth in marriage. When you are in love, you still don’t know and know yourself clearly, let alone what kind of spouse you need. As the age of marriage increases, especially after many families have raised young children, the heavy childcare tasks and the gap in educational concepts have slowly highlighted the long-term conflicts accumulated in marriages. In addition, the different life development trajectories of the two parties have resulted in a disparity in strength and a decrease in the number of different languages. Marriage experts point out that the biggest reason for divorce is not extramarital affairs, but that the couple cannot cooperate and can no longer live together. In terms of communication methods, there is a saying in China that "acquaintances are unreasonable". The relationship between husband and wife is too familiar, and they often ignore the needs of their spouses, no longer choose the way to express themselves, and do not hide their emotions when showing them. In many cases It will hurt the other party. After the child is born, all the mother's emotions are transferred to the child, and indifference becomes the emotional crux of both parties. Each other's negative emotions exaggerate each other, making the family atmosphere tense.

Naturally, then, psychologists have come up with some strategies for avoiding the "seven-year itch": premarital prevention.

According to statistics from authoritative departments, among marriages that have problems, a large proportion of them were hasty unions. Keep a clear head when you are in love, and if possible, listen to the opinions of friends around you. If you can get the guidance of a marriage expert, you will add a rational element to your marriage. Clarify some of your own thoughts and concepts, and treat your future married life with a rational perspective.

The concept of dedication - don’t find fault with the other person, don’t hope to reshape the other person. Instead, you should always ask yourself: "What can I bring to the other person - a worry-free material life? Enriched spiritual food? A sense of security and happiness?" In daily life, do something for the other person from the bottom of your heart, even the smallest thing. Things, a hug, a smile, a kiss, make the other person feel the warmth.

Leave space - many marriages are perishing amid restraint and counter-restraint, so many people propose to leave space for each other. In fact, you should first leave space for yourself, maintain a normal circle of friends outside marriage, and don't regard marriage as your only spiritual sustenance. Constantly improve your life wisdom in relationships, constantly adjust yourself, and adapt to marriage.

Adjust expectations - Excessively high expectations will contrast with reality, causing stress on both parties. Your spouse may not necessarily be the best and most outstanding of the opposite sexes you have met, but he may be the most suitable for you, and that is enough.

Choose Divorce - Divorce is not as scary as you think. If both parties agree that the marriage is the wrong one, divorce may be the wisest option. But if you still can't reflect on yourself well after divorce and still don't know what you need, that would be really scary. We often see people who don’t pay much attention to marriage and divorce after their first divorce. Their marriages enter an unstable state, and their entire lives are greatly distorted.

Marriage is not a simple seven-year itch. In fact, many marriages will have problems when they reach a certain stage of marriage. Especially in the current era of expressing individuality, no one wants to wrong themselves anymore. Divorce is showing new characteristics: the age of marriage is getting shorter and shorter, and the divorce rate is getting higher and higher. In fact, everyone is like a book. No matter how good the book is, the excitement, freshness and suspense when reading it for the first time will fade away when reading it later. You must constantly inject new content to make people read it often. Use your own wisdom to create an atmosphere of love and carry the marriage through to the end.

The dangerous period of marriage, borrowing an unverifiable period, describes the mental trajectory of the emotional world of "passionate love-marriage-boring-exhaustion-escape". Marriage is a kind of entry, and entry means gaining and experiencing loss. When lovers hold hands at the wedding hall, they should be faced with this - now that they have a home and a fixed partner, can they jointly welcome the life that gradually becomes dull or even day after day? How many people can survive the seven-year itch? Can you rely on creativity to make the seven years less boring and successfully pass the limit of the seven-year itch? That's a good question.

The Seven Year Itch was originally a movie directed by Billy Wilder and starring Marilyn Monroe. It tells the story of a publisher who has been married for 7 years but has no courage. When his wife and children were on vacation, he fantasized about the beautiful new advertising star upstairs. In the process of imagining, his moral values ??and his own The thieves' thoughts kept colliding, and finally he made a decision - to reject the temptation and immediately rush to the resort where his wife and children were. The classic shot of Monroe standing on a subway vent and letting the wind blow up her white tutu is from this movie.

The movie The Seven Year Itch

More than fifty years ago, the famous sexy movie star Marilyn Monroe starred in the movie "The Seven Year Itch". The film describes a publisher who has been married for seven years. Although he has a wealthy and happy family, his monotonous married life makes him feel uncomfortable and itchy in his heart. It happened that his wife and children were away on vacation at this time, so he fancied the new young and beautiful advertising girl upstairs. In the process of imagining, his moral concepts constantly collided with his playfulness, so he finally made a decision: reject the temptation and immediately rush to the resort where his wife and children are to reunite with them. Since the screening of this film caused a sensation in the United States and even around the world, an important concept or phenomenon of marriage - the seven-year itch - has been recognized by many people.

The seven-year itch, a familiar concept, generally refers to couples who have lived together for a long time. One or both of them feel monotonous and boring and have lost the romance and romance of the past. Passionate, so they are ready to pursue new objects and excitement outside of marriage. At this time, men seek new loves and women have affairs and marital crises are more likely to occur, and seven years after marriage is often a critical period. , is a "hump".

How long can love and passion last

For decades, people have conducted a lot of research on whether the "seven-year itch" exists. The earliest relevant information can be found in Kinsey's sexology report 50 years ago. That is, among 2,000 married men, 40% claimed that they began to seek extramarital sexual relations in their first marriage, and most of them had sex. During the same period, 20% of married women admitted to having extramarital sexual relations in the first five years of marriage, half of them before the seventh year of marriage. In addition, a United Nations statistical yearbook covering 62 countries, regions and ethnic groups shows that the fourth year of marriage is the peak period for divorce.

A recent survey conducted by a university in Pennsylvania, USA, interviewed 4,000 couples and followed them for 20 years. The results showed that the emotional life of couples or couples begins 14 years after marriage. At this important juncture, many men and women parted ways after living together for 14 years. As for those couples who have successfully overcome the "14-year itch", many of them have thought about divorce, but it is only because of their children, financial problems, and their sense of responsibility for the marriage that they have stayed in marriage. .

Looking at these survey data, it is not clear whether it is the four-year itch, the seven-year itch, or the fourteen-year itch. However, most of the research data agrees that as marriage continues, , especially for those who live a monotonous and boring married life, losing interest and passion in existing married life, especially sexual life, or even feeling bored, seems to come sooner or later. This kind of emotional change is the enemy of marriage. It may bring serious crisis to people's married life and cause the love building carefully constructed by couples to collapse in an instant. And this situation may be the true meaning of the concept or phenomenon of marriage called the seven-year itch.

Where does the boredom in marriage come from?

So, why do people (at least a considerable number of people) become dissatisfied with a marriage life that is originally full of sweetness, romance and warmth? Are you tired? Why stay with your lover but have different thoughts, or even feel lonely and ready to move? In the past, there may have been only one answer to this question, which was attributed to the quality of people's thoughts. Now it seems that although there are some people who are restless, fond of the new and dislike the old in their attitude towards marriage issues, there are some who have bad qualities and even have a degraded life. However, if such an extremely complex marriage phenomenon is all attributed to the quality of people's thoughts, it will be an oversimplification of the problem. . In fact, this relatively common social problem has already attracted widespread attention from many marriage experts, psychologists, sexologists, and even anthropologists and biologists at home and abroad. A large number of investigations and studies have been conducted, allowing us to understand this problem. Awareness of the problem broadens horizons.

Many marriage experts and psychologists today believe that in married life, both husband and wife get along day and night, and their contact with each other becomes more and more real, comprehensive, and detailed, and the sense of mystery gradually disappears. In addition, a series of survival problems Problems come one after another, and people are tired of dealing with practical problems in all aspects such as society, interpersonal relationships, workplace, family and children, etc., which will make the daily life of couples become dull and eclipsed. What may have been a novel, romantic, and intoxicating sex life will become monotonous, boring, routine, and even an obligation and burden due to insisting on the same position, posture, and action for many years. All these situations that occur in a long-term marriage can lead to a weakening of the relationship between the couple and put the marriage relationship in potential crisis.

Some writers believe that the cause of the so-called seven-year itch is actually quite simple. They say that no matter how good the chocolate ice cream tastes, how fragrant the lilacs bloom, or how beautiful the landscape is, we will eventually lose our strong interest in it and become indifferent. They also said that when a couple gets married and the bride wears a beautiful wedding ring on her finger, in the first few weeks after the wedding, she will be keenly aware of the existence of the wedding ring and keep looking at it and turning it. He looked at it and realized it was on his finger. However, little by little she will become insensible, and eventually she won't even feel that the wedding ring is still on her finger.

People's feelings about love and sex are often like this, that is, as time goes by, everything becomes accustomed to it and becomes dull and numb.

In recent years, a lot of research materials in natural science have been released. Researchers at a university in the United States believe that all females in the biological world bear the important mission of preserving and continuing the species, which makes them inclined to obtain as many male genes as possible from males, because only in this way can they produce Only the offspring will have stronger vitality and survive better. They believe that for women, the four-year itch has been programmed into women's genes, and that this is entirely the result of biological evolution. Another research data said that when both sexes are in love, they will produce a chemical called amphetamine in their brain stems. This is a neurostimulant that can make people become sentimental, enthusiastic and impulsive. The secretion of amphetamine during love will become less and less, and it usually lasts for four years. Russian sexologists published an article stating that during sexual intimacy, women’s sexual organs can produce some special chemicals that can stimulate men’s sexual performance, but over time their sensitivity to such chemicals will decrease. Gradually decrease, which may be the reason for some men to change their mind. This theory has not been fully confirmed.

Recently, in the world's authoritative natural science magazine "Nature", a new discovery by researchers from the University of Leeds in the UK was published: They studied the mating behavior of red jungle fowl and found that new partners can arouse The male red jungle fowl's sexual desire can also increase the amount of sperm in his body. However, when a male chicken mates with the same female chicken, the amount of sperm excreted almost gradually decreases. After mating with the same female about 20 times, the male loses sexual desire and stops emitting sperm. But if a strange female appears, the male's sexual desire will arise spontaneously. Apparently, this study shows that switching to a new mate seems to be a biological instinct.

A century of love is a matter of human effort

These investigations and studies on the seven-year itch have yet to be further confirmed. The practical significance of all these research results is to remind us to cherish what we have now. Marriage and relationship make the world of two people more harmonious, happy and happy, and it must not be a reason to prefer the new and dislike the old or even legalize extramarital sexual relations. This is because people can control their instinctive behaviors through subjective consciousness. This is why people do not blindly rush to food when they are hungry, nor do people casually rush to any sexual goal, because people After all, it is a higher animal than other animals. Therefore, if we are asked whether we can overcome the so-called four-year itch, seven-year itch or even the fourteen-year itch, and persist in marriage and love, including sex that brings infinite joy to people, for a long time? There is only one answer, That means everything is human-made.

Facts have proved that in the journey of marriage, as long as the love between husband and wife lasts forever, they care about each other and love each other at all times, everywhere and in everything, strengthen communication, constantly communicate and understand each other, in daily life Life includes having the courage to innovate in sexual life, constantly trying, and constantly adding new ideas. Keeping the relationship between husband and wife at a constant temperature can inject new vitality and vitality into our marriage life, and enable us to join hands along the long road of love. Go down.