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"Seven Years Rich "

Source: Buzz

ARTICLE

The Seven-Year Itch or Seven Years Rich? Many myths pervade society and one of them is possibly the existence of the seven-year itch! Is there any data to support this truism or only because it’s been repeated ad nauseam have people come to accept its existence? But then this is exactly what gets people into emotional trouble – their inability to question, challenge and dispute long held though not necessarily sensible or realistic beliefs, idioms or adages! And we have plenty of evidence to show how contrasting views in well-known proverbs exist and cancel out each other. So does ‘absence make the heart grow fonder’ or is ‘out of sight out of mind’? ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ but then don’t ‘clothes make a man’? ‘Nothing ventured nothing have’ but isn’t it ‘better to be safe than sorry’? ‘Haste makes waste’ but ‘time waits for no man’!

In each of the above, endorsement or rejection can occur depending on the views each of us have and the situations we choose to apply them in. And as William James the famous psychologist once said, “Man’s will to believe” and his beliefs (however irrational they may be!) often help him! Furthermore believing in ideas often takes us towards self-fulfilling prophecies! So if you believe in the existence of the seven-year itch, you may unintentionally and unknowingly be setting yourself up for behaviors that would interfere and intrude in happy relating and loving. By your own opinion of its existence you come in the way of your own goal of closeness and intimacy.  But suppose your goal is not to relate intimately to, and get along famously with your spouse/partner/lover – the belief in the seven-year itch may well help you endorse why your aren’t relating well anymore, and would aid in justifying your difficulties! “After all,” you’d repeat to yourself endlessly, “it’s the seven-year itch”!

So the question then is to:

• Raise and examine the reasons why relationships over time deteriorate rather than flourish – often nothing to do with the years of togetherness, but mostly to do with the methods or ways in that togetherness!
• Have you stopped paying attention to the little nuances that you used to so advertently watch out for in your early days of courting/staying together. Attention to details like consideration, etiquette, graciousness, mutual respect for preferences etc., do not have to end as the years go by. If anything they are more important than they possibly ever were in the early days. For due to love and lust, many irritants went unnoticed or were more easily bypassed and glossed over. After time however, what was easily ignorable is now effortlessly magnified and often exaggerated.
• Make efforts to sustain and enhance romance and intimacy. The belief “it should ‘just’ happen” and the idea “that working on love kills its spontaneity” may be another reason for the d-itch!