The Seven Year Itch

I don’t remember where I specifically heard about the “seven year itch.” It wasn’t mentioned in my short engagement, during my early marriage, or the years after. But somehow, as my husband and I have traversed through our seventh year of marriage, we found ourselves referring to it. Google tells me the term came from a Marilyn Monroe film in the 1950s, which is surprising since modern marriages look wholly different, generally speaking, now, than they did back then. I can imagine the reason why women would leave marriages now also looks entirely different than it did then, since women could not even have their own bank accounts until the 1960s.

So how does the seven year itch show up in the modern marriages of new parents today? According to the University of Texas, up to seventy percent of mothers in the United States are expected to be the breadwinners of their families. These modern mothers are in professional meetings by day and the predominant caretakers in their homes by night. The Covid-pandemic only exacerbated these roles, blurring the compartmentalizations of “work” and “home” with remote pivots. The New York Times created "The Primal Scream",” a series of articles regarding modern motherhood and hotline mothers can call to scream. This is where we are.

At the same time, many of the husbands in these heterosexual partnerships are doing far more of the caregiving and household chores than their fathers and grandfathers. But it still isn’t enough for mothers across the U.S. to feel even slightly okay, let alone thrive.

In my amateur opinion, I suspect most of what might contribute to any sort of modern “seven day itch,” or at least for couples with children, would be this inequity.

But this does not resemble my own marriage that much.

Beyond my husband bearing the financial burden of our family, he contributes to all of the tasks of raising two young children that he physically can. As a part-time stay-at-home-mother, I can at least squeeze in some personal time during naps and after bedtime, but he consistently does not get these opportunities as he works in an office during the day and freelances by night. Not that my responsibilities don’t overwhelm me at times, but he certainly deserves his own hotline to scream into every once in a while (although, he would never).

So why were my husband and I feeling like maybe there might be some truth in this seven year curse? We plan date nights out once or twice a month, spend weekend mornings as a family at our local gym which we love, and are excellent partners in sharing household and caregiving demands as equally as we can. In these years of marriage, especially after becoming parents, we’ve acutely learned each other’s strengths and weaknesses in these demands, and for the most part, we are able to jump in when the other needs (for example, a few months ago, I announced my retirement from the splashing bath time chaos, so he knows that’s now his department–highly recommend, mamas!).

But the unrelenting stress of modern parenting during a pandemic, with lack of familial and social supports, as well as nationwide policies that could ease some of the burden of caregiving takes a toll on even the strongest of couples.

It’s not always so obvious, of course. It’s the child who woke up earlier than usual and demands their waffles when you just needed thirty more minutes of sleep. It’s the logistical and insinuations of whose work matters more when your youngest has a fever and cannot attend daycare, and you have no one else around to call. It’s the daily grind of workplace and familial obligations when you really just crave some much needed time to yourself. These difficulties rise up all throughout our days, and we often take out our frustrations on our primary safe spaces–our spouses. I don’t really know any couple, with and without outside support systems, who say that they deal with these examples well.

But while myself and others fill our social media accounts of humorous venting or sincere sharing about the difficulties of modern motherhood, nearly no one I know shares about what’s happening within their marriages.

Hear me out– I am not suggesting we flood social media with our most intimate details of strife and conflict in our homes! But we do seem more comfortable venting about the insanity of snack demands and diaper-changes than about our partners who don’t think to run the dishwasher when it’s full or leave their shoes in the middle of the hall. It’s harder to share when they may have said something deeply hurtful. And of course, there are a lot of deep communication, trust, sexual and emotional challenges that are too intimate to share outside of marriage. If couples are fortunate enough to have the financial and time-related capacity to be in therapy, they will most likely share them there. But outside of these limited spaces, there’s almost zero discussion, from what I’ve seen, about the ebbs and flows of everyday married life (add parenthood, add pandemic, add hostile policies, work environments, and culture for families).

Certainly, marriages and long-term partnerships of any kind have endless quirks and difficulties and joys and experiences that can exist between two people in a committed relationship, but perhaps normalizing the ebbs and flows in a more visual or vocal way would help the rest of us understand the everyday, expected disagreements that couples experience inevitably face:

• The wrong look on a tough morning that sets one person off.

• The walk to the car one morning without the kiss goodbye when the other was anticipating it.

• The forgotten pile of clothes that they said they would put away to ease some of your load.

• The at home “date night” suddenly interrupted with a child refusing to sleep

We can normalize these inevitabilities in relationships without assuming a couple is doomed for divorce.

For decades, society has spoon-fed us only portrayals of overly-romanticized fairy-tales or toxic divorces. There aren’t many depictions of the realistic in-between of those extremes.

All couples should feel safe, seen, and valued in their partnerships (and I would never suggest divorce isn’t a valid and necessary option for some), I’m only trying to call for us to normalize the inevitable challenges that healthy marriages face a little bit more. All individuals within a marriage could also probably name more than a few times when they may have felt deeply hurt by their partners. So many of us in marriages and committed partnerships with children are unlearning and unpacking our own upbringings and families while we desperately try to forge ahead to create new patterns. I’m not sure that can happen without genuine, in-good-faith discussions with trusted and supportive loved ones about the difficulties we experience in our marriages from time to time. Or just more of a sense that others may experience bickering or major miscommunications or even small betrayals. I’m not sure it’s helping any of our marriages, through the seven year itch or beyond, for all of us to present only the picture-esque, Instagram filtered, perfected images of our partnerships to our friends and families.

In reflecting on my own marriage, I honestly think maybe our seven year itch could be solved through an entire night (or several!) away without the kids and demands of parenthood. But that’s a fantasy for us right now. Instead, this Valentine’s Day, our eighth one as a married couple, we will cross our fingers that the kids fall asleep on time, light a few candles, and enjoy some take-out. We will thank Cupid we got through this itch and hope he’ll stick around in our favor through whichever itch comes next.