The 7 year itch: What it is & how to protect your relationship from it!

When you get in a long term relationship with someone, you plan on staying together, happily ever after! This is especially true if you’ve chosen to walk down the aisle and marry the person that you love. Unfortunately, despite the commitment and the desire to stay madly in love, many people come to realize that the passion starts to fizzle out after the 7 year mark.

We live in a society that feeds us Hollywood movies and Disney romances that don’t ever really show us how to keep the flame alive in a relationship, so many people are faced with the 7 year itch!

I wanted to write today’s article on what this feeling is, where exactly it comes from, and most importantly, what you can do about it! It’s a lot more common than a lot of people realize, and when they’re faced with it, they often don’t know how to begin to navigate the situation.

I am going to provide you with some insight in terms of where this itch stems from so that you can use this information to define longterm solutions. And don’t worry, I’m going to give you some tips and tools to help you restore that powerful bond with the person you love. So let’s dive right in!

What is the seven year itch?

We have all heard of the honeymoon stage, right? When you begin a relationship with someone you love, you see the world through rose colored glasses and everything is just magical. You’re obsessed with one another, you crave each other’s presence day and night, and the prospect of spending your future together fills you with unparalleled joys.

As time goes on, things can start to feel a bit monotonous and ever so slightly predictable. Sadly, this is often why relationships fail. Without realizing it, a married couple can begin to take each other for granted and they stop nurturing the relationship.

I actually just worked with someone who had found herself having to deal with the itch in her relationship. Rebecca had been with her husband, Bruce, for about six and a half years. They used to be madly in love and could not get enough of each other, but as the years went on, they started to drift apart.

They both happened to be very busy people, so it was easy to start to disconnect from each other. They had stopped being friends long ago and were just coasting through life, focusing on their jobs, their kids, and their passions.

While it’s absolutely wonderful (and very important) to focus on other elements in your life than just your relationship, your relationship is not going to nurture itself.

Rebecca had started to realize this when she saw that her relationship with Bruce was completely neglected. The disconnect was especially apparent when she began developing feelings for a man that had been one of her colleagues for many years.

She and Bruce had built separate lives despite the fact that they were living under the same roof, and she was starting to feel like she was losing interest in the relationship of almost 7 years of marriage. She came to me for help in reviving the love that used to exist between them because she didn’t want to lose her husband or her family.

We’ve been working together for a few months and I am happy to say that she and Bruce are finding their way back to each other using the tools that I will go over a little further down.

So to answer the question of what the 7 year itch is, in my experience as a love and relationship coach, I have taken note that happiness in a relationship declines right around the 7th year.

Let’s summarize what the 7 year itch is :

• You start to feel bored and uninspired by your significant other and this relationship
• You might start to gravitate towards someone who is not your partner
• You focus on the negative aspects of your significant other’s personality
• You find yourselves fighting over the same thing over and over again
• You don’t feel like you have any common interests anymore

With all of these negative emotions, you start to crave something new, something different, and something more exciting, and that, my friends, is the seven year itch.

And now it’s time to find an answer to the question of how to fight the seven year itch!

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Avoiding discontent and overcoming the 7 year itch

The good news is that you have already gone out of your way to figure out what the problem is and how you can fix this situation. The worst thing you could do would be to simply let this go and hope that it will fix itself.

Discontent in a relationship doesn’t normally just fix itself, so it’ll be important for you to pinpoint what exactly is making you feel dissatisfied with this relationship and what kind of concrete, longterm solutions you can provide.

I also want you to keep in mind that this isn’t something that is fixed overnight. If you’re feeling the seven year itch, then you’ve been together for a long time and things have been coming apart for quite some time. But don’t let that scare you! You are already on the path towards success because you have gone out of your way to find information and tools that will help you to get your relationship with your spouse or significant other back on track!

Taking accountability when you’re dealing with the itch

Honesty with yourself is going to be a key player right now. A relationship is a two way road and if you and your partner haven’t been working on maintaining the romance, you both played a role in the current state of things.

So I encourage you to ask yourself what you could start doing differently from here on out to make your partner feel more desired and to introduce more romance back into the relationship.

Be very open with yourself and explore your answer to: Is the relationship really the issue or are you dissatisfied with other elements of your life?

Sometimes an easy fix is to work on bringing more joy and fulfillment into your life via your personal and professional goals. In some cases, people let their happiness depend on their partners and relationships too much, without realizing that their happiness is their own responsibility.

So if you feel that maybe you are making your happiness your partner’s responsibility when in reality it should only be your own, I invite you to start spending more time doing things that make you genuinely happy! This is a great way to fight the seven year itch AND make your personal life feel more gratifying.

Focusing on the good when you’re struggling with the seven years itch

Now that we’ve explored the 7 year itch meaning a bit more, you understand why it’s so important to focus on the positives in the relationship. When you start to feel bored or dissatisfied, it becomes all too easy to nitpick and focus on the little things your partner does that bug you.

But if you’re able to change your approach and really look at all the things that you love about your partner, it will be easier to create a more positive dynamic in the relationship. Building each other up, going out of your way to do nice things for each other, and making each other feel loved can help you restore the bond.

Love has different seasons

Another thing I remind my clients of is that love changes and evolves over the years. So if you’ve been together for seven years, you can’t expect the relationship to be the same as it was at the very beginning.

There are always going to be highs and lows, and the fiery, passionate love that you knew at the beginning of the relationship will eventually turn into a more mature love. But that doesn’t mean that it has to stop being exciting! It’s just up to you to work on figuring out a way to bring in some new forms of romance.

Relationships need to be renewed, and that in and of itself could actually be very exciting. If you look at this as an opportunity to experience something new and exciting, then you can revamp the relationship. So why not celebrate your seventh year anniversary by doing something entirely new. Organize a surprise for your significant other that you know he or she would love.

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Show interest in your partner’s interests

Make sure that you pay attention to what makes your partner tick and support them in THEIR passions! A lot of people don’t realize that they’re minimizing the things that their partner actually really likes, and it’s creating a divide in the relationship.

So let’s say your partner really likes Game of Thrones, but you’ve never watched it. You think it’s kind of silly, but your partner definitely loves it. Why not suggest watching the first season together and making homemade popcorn?

You two can have so much fun if you just share things that you both love. Always be careful to lift your partner up when it comes to their passions instead of making them feel silly.

Let go of the notion of having a perfect relationship!

There is no such thing as a perfect relationship, but you can make this relationship perfect for you. Think about all the new things you can share together, and make time for intimacy.

Always carve out alone time together, even if you have a family and a million responsibilities. It’s important to make the conscious effort to reconnect so that you can strengthen the bond.

Another great way to strengthen the bond between you and your significant other is to be of service together. Having a common purpose and working together to help others will fill you with a sense of fulfillment, but it will also strengthen your bond because you are sharing something special.

You can turn the seven year itch into something that transforms your relationship

If you really get active and work on making changes, this challenging period can actually turn out to be a huge blessing in disguise!

Remember, we are here to help you from A to Z so please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us for one on one coaching. Join the Happily Committed Project and transform your relationship in a meaningful and powerful way.

As this article comes to an end, I want you to rest assured that you’re already on the right track. You aren’t sitting back, waiting for the seven year itch to get fixed on its own. You’ve gone out of your way to seek out information that will help you to hit the reset button and make your relationship better than ever.

There are also products available to you to help you reinforce your bond with the one you love. For example, you can learn how to reignite the flame between you two by clicking here!

So to summarize, the best way to protect or heal your relationship from the dreaded itch is to take accountability for your own actions and your role in the situation, focus on the positive things that your partner contributes to your life, accept that love has different seasons and it’s time for yours to be renewed, make time for intimacy, work on being of service together, and last but not least, make this relationship perfect for you.

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to leave them in the comments section below!

I sincerely wish you all the best in life and love,

Your coach when you are wondering, “What is the seven year itch and what can I do about it?”