January 5, 2011 • 20 mins
Could it be true that monogamous couples get an urge to cheat approximately every seven years? In this episode, Molly and Cristen explore the origin of this belief, as well as its validity -- or lack thereof.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented twenty twelve Camri. It's ready.
Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you? From
houstuff works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen and I'm Molly. Molly. Got a little fact
(00:21):
about myself to share with you. Add to my trading
card collection. I know its collection has grown far too large,
but here's another one. Okay, So in terms of my
knowledge of movies, contemporary movies, I got some gaps. I
have noticed that I had some big gaps in there,
(00:42):
all right. One time I said ten points to Griffindor
and Kristin had no idea what I was talking about.
All right, you know what, Harry Potter, that's another that's
just a side note. Nay, I just got that reference
right now. So maybe I'm not so behind the times
as you think I am. But if you were to
rewind and give me some kind of oh, I don't know,
nineteen fifties, a musical number, something, you can bust it out.
(01:09):
I can bust it out. So you're saying old movies,
old movie is where it's at. What I'm trying to
say to you, Mollie, is that I grew up watching
a lot of old movies, one of which was The
Seven Year Itch starring Marilyn Monroe, of course and Tom Mule,
And it's about this guy whose family leaves town for
(01:30):
the summer and he stays in the city. I guess
to work. I haven't seen it in a while. And
he has this super super foxy neighbor, Miss Marilyn Monroe.
This is also the movie with the famous scene where
she's standing over the subway grate, right, the wind blows
up her her dress, and he's very tempted to have
(01:51):
an affair with her because she's Marilyn Monroe, so of
course you would want to hence the whole The Seven
Year Itch, right. I think the work he's doing is
he's editing a book by some crazy doctor and the psychiatrist,
and the psychiatrists has a theory that men are tempted
to stray after exactly seven years. So at the very
(02:12):
time he's dealing with this super foxy neighbor, to use
Kristen's words, he's got this book in front of him
which says, oh, this is natural. You should feel this way. Now.
Let me tell you though, when you are maybe I
don't know, eight or nine years old watching this movie.
I mean, this movie went straight over my head. I
remember thinking that it was like, I don't really know
(02:34):
what the buzz about this, about this new Tommy ele
movie is as I said, drinking my tea, Oh that
little vision of little Kristin not understanding so classic. How
many stars would you give it? Uh? You know, but again,
well it's been a long time since I've seen it.
But of your memories, of my memories, out of five stars, sure, okay,
(02:58):
little Kristin would probably give it. I'd probably give it
three stars because I did really like Marilyn Monroe movies
and it was in color. Yeah, it has some good
good costume me. So when you're when your little kid
complaying black and white to color pictures, do colors always
get an extra star? Yeah? And technicolor gets a star
and a half. Okay. Anyway, so I didn't get seven
year itch back then, but today today you're all grown
(03:21):
up where I'm all grown up. I get the innu
windows finally, and we know so much about the seven
year itch. We're gonna we're gonna talk about whether or
not this really exists, right, because I think you see
it all the time in the newspapers. I mean they've
used it for baseball players who are leaving teams after
seven years. They use it when marriages break up. It's
(03:42):
become just this very common term in the lexicon, the
seven year itch. After seven years, you've got to move along.
And the reason you've got to start with this movie
is because the whole reason this phrase is in our
vocabulary is because of the movie. Originally, when the play
started to play, when the guy was riding the play,
the main character been married for ten years, and it
(04:05):
was only because he used to work as a joke
writer for this hillbilly comedian who used to say something like,
I know the girl's over twenty one because she's had
the seven year itch four times seven year itch meaning
some weird skin disease, which was its common usage before
the nineteen fifties. When this play came out, he just
(04:25):
borrowed the term from the comedian and changed the character's
marriage from ten years to seven. Yeah, so we have
George Axelrod to thank for that. The play right, the
play right. But William Sapphire In the New York Times,
the linguists tried to go back and see where Axelrod
even got that seven year itch, and he goes all
(04:46):
the way back to I think the earliest date that
he gets is eighteen fifty four with Henry David Thurreau,
who writes these maybe but the spring months in the
life of the race, if we have had the seven
years itch, we have not seen the seventeen year locus yet.
In concude that is I think my favorite Henry David
(05:08):
Threau impression of her. I really wish you'd been around
when I read that book in college. It is very authentic.
So yeah, but Throaw doesn't really explain with that. Yeah,
we got nothing from that. With most things that Threau
tries to explain, I don't know why I've got such
a hang up on Thureau. But yeah, he traces it
through some other usages in the early nineteen hundreds, and
(05:29):
it always sort of means this unidentifiable illness. Yeah, I
liked this one. This is from Carl Sandberg in the
nineteen thirty six poem The People Yes, and the line
is may you have the seven year itch? Was answered,
I hope your wife eats crackers in bed. So it's
something annoying, it's a little pest it's a pest. And
it's only because seven is used so often biblically and
(05:54):
in uh you know, repetition, and this comedian picked it up,
used in the joke, and inspired Axel Rod the playwright.
So I really have the comedian Henry David Thereau and
the playwright to thank for this common phrase and all
rooted in the Bible exactly, going back to the Bible's
obsession with the number seven and uh you know. The
(06:15):
question then becomes did they hit on something accidentally? Is
it actually a real phenomenon, particularly in a relationship, because
here we go, people get ready. In the United States,
the median length of a marriage is roughly seven years.
Oh my goodness. It's like all those people were just
(06:39):
It's like Henry David thureau knew something was about sitting
alone in a cabin. He was like, if I were married,
I bet it well the last for seven years, I'm
just gonna hang out by myself on this pond. And
the row was onto something that pay my taxes. Now,
if a marriage does cross that seven year, all right,
(07:00):
sofa we get Let's say we get to ten years.
Research has also shown that you will have already gone
through two major slumps, one of which does happen at
seven years. Yes, so they're saying that people who stay
married for that decade they have to weather that slump.
But the first slump comes it around four years. That's
(07:23):
when the honeymoon effect is gone, right, and they're really
surprised to find this slump that, you know, after four years,
only four years. Yeah, it's kind of disappointing. You haven't
even used your china a whole bunch yet, I know.
But anyway, go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, after four years,
there's this big slump, and it may be because you know,
you're getting used to your roles, maybe marriage is lost,
(07:43):
it's luster, maybe you've started to have children. So in
this first slump at four years, they're saying that, you know,
the passion might have dimmed a little bit. You can't
maintain that level of passion forever. So we've talked about
you're getting used to your new roles. Maybe now you're
getting a little bored. That's the first slump, and then
it might pick back up as you start to have children,
(08:04):
as you start to you know, get in your groove,
and then again it's going to go down at seven Yeah,
those are the two main hurdles that a newly married
couple has looked forward to. Now, backing up this idea
of that four year slump, we have one of our
favorite women in the world, noted anthropologists Helen Fisher, right,
(08:25):
and it did not surprise Helen Fisher that these researchers
in nineteen ninety nine found those four and seven year slumps.
She would argue that instead of the seven yearch we
should call it the four year itch, which again is
not very enchanting to think about when you're getting married.
But she has looked at a bunch of societies, collected
one hundred and sixty societies, and in all of these societies,
(08:48):
marriage is valued. You know, they all are getting married
and they part around four years. That's when divorces peak.
And so you know, while we said the median of
American marriages is seven, there are a lot of these
marriages they're saying where the parachute doesn't open. To borrow
one phrase from one of these articles, and she's saying,
(09:09):
Helen Fisher is saying that there's a reason why that
four years is significant, and it goes back to one
of our favorite topics of discussion evolution and our early
human ancestors. And Fisher points out that in the olden
days we go back in time a little bit, that
a woman and a man would have a child, that
the child being a human baby is sort of you know,
(09:32):
subject to the elements. It takes a lot of parenting
to get a kid to be a toddler, especially back
then when survival rates were scarce and human births were
spaced out four years apart. Because the woman would have
the child, she'd breastfeed, they would get it to become
a toddler, a little bit more self sufficient, not really,
but you know, it had a better chance of survival. Yeah,
(09:54):
And then she's saying that to ensure genetic diversity among
your children, to give all your chilln the best chance
at survival, you wouldn't want to just have another baby
with that that same gene pool, right, You'd want to
try a different gene pool because maybe that could be
even stronger and cooler, and even you'd want to mix
up the major histoic compatibility complexes clearly exactly. I mean,
(10:17):
so what they would do is at four years the
kid could probably be taken care of by you know,
the village you know, he wouldn't need just his mother
and his father anymore. So four years the mother and
the father might go have a child with someone else. Sure,
So she's saying that what's been passed down to us
is this desire to have a child with someone new
every four years, and a lot of times these divorces
(10:39):
will happen at the height of our reproductive years. So
Fisher thinks that we are just biologically driven to wanna
maybe split up, maybe see somebody a new after a
handful of years. I mean, think about how many things
we've talked about on this podcast, Christ that are driven
by some subconscious desire to give our child the best
(10:59):
genetic makeup it could possibly have. I mean, we've talked
about how to smell, as you talked about with the MHCs.
It drives, it drives our attraction to other people. So
she's saying that this four year mark, somehow, subconsciously in
our body, we know that's the time in which we've
had a child, got it to the age of four
or five, where it can be taken care of by
(11:19):
relatives and friends, and then it's time to move on, right.
And you know, if we think that four years is
a short amount of time to start getting the cold feet.
There was another article from two thousand and seven in
the New York Times that covered research on a three
year itch. So the time that we're going to be happy,
(11:41):
like really you know, on fire with somebody is getting
the window is getting smaller and smaller, Molly. But you know,
I think that that three year itch is particularly American phenomenon.
It's very US centric and we're talking about marriages. The
one thing that a lot of this research leaves out
is the idea of cohabitating couples who are not married,
may not even plan to get married right, and they
(12:02):
don't show up in this research because what the researchers
are always looking at is demographic data about when the
marriage is actually go to divorce court. And Fisher herself
points out that in the US, we tend to divorce
a year earlier than the four year ritch, in about
two or three years, because chemistry, if you look at
our chemistry in her biology, that's when that spark, that
romantic spark starts to fade, the sizzle fizzles, And she
(12:25):
just says, Americans have gotten really good at jumping that
gun of this isn't this isn't as perfect as it
was when we started. Let's go ahead and cut line,
and we definitely just seem to jump the gun in
the US compared to our friends across the pond, because
there was an article in the UK Times that looked
at data from the Office of National Statistics and found
(12:48):
that eleven years is the average time the divorce couples
had stayed together before their marriage broke up. Right, You're
always seeing articles come out of the UK about the
ten or the eleven year itch. So it definitely varies
by country. But a lot of these people, no matter
what year they come up with, whether it's three years,
ten years, eleven years, there's always this question of, you know,
should we not have such stigma around divorce, should we
(13:11):
just expect couples to divorce at ten or eleven years?
And there's always a quote about how you know, it
can be a self fulfilling prophecy. I think if you
look for reasons to be unhappy at three years, four years,
at seven years, at ten years, you can find them.
And so what they're saying, you know, relationship experts, economists,
everyone is just saying you got to give your marriage
more attention at these points in which there might be
(13:34):
a slump. You know, that's sort of why the researchers
put out that study about the four and the seven
years slump. They're saying, pay more attention to the other person.
Then maybe it's if it's something you know about, it's
something you can get through. And I think we also
have to take into account how our longer lifespans are
kind of changing the terms of marriage. Because let's say, oh,
(13:59):
in the medieval times, couples would stay together forever, but
forever meant like eleven, twelve, thirteen years, because there I
would just die. Yeah. But today, when we get married,
if we stay till death to his part, I mean
death is coming later and later, and so we're expected
to stay with each other longer than we ever have before.
(14:22):
So I mean it's you can look at either way.
You can either be sort of, I guess, an excuse
to get you out of a bad relationship, like yeah,
I'm sorry, like I'm looking for we're not meant to
be together that long. You can look at it as
a way to pay attention to relationship and get through
what might be a really hard time. You can do
what one politician did in Bavaria. Oh, this was great.
(14:42):
Her name is Gabrielli Polly and she was wearing for
the Christian Social Union Party, which is a very conservative
Catholic party, I believe, and I don't think her platform
for the party went over that well. And her proposal
was that every marriage that takes place in Germany should
be limited to seven years. Oh, this was just just
civil marriages. If you get married in the church then okay,
(15:03):
same rules apply. But if you have a civil marriage,
it's seven years. You'll you can either re up basically
and get another seven years under your belt, or it's
just dissolved and you don't have to just walk away. Yeah,
you don't have to fool with divorce court or anything
like that. So, you know, it's I don't think that's
something that's gonna fly in in our society where we're
(15:25):
big on romance and the the till deathtyp part thing.
But again, our marriages don't last that long, so don't
really last that long. But one thing that we have
not touched on is whether or not kids play a
role in this seven year itch. Tom Yules character had children,
you know, maybe maybe that could have been what was
driving him so crazy he was feeling like a dowdy
(15:47):
old daddy. Well, you know, in that very first day
we talked about the four and the seven year slump.
That's what the researchers say that second slump, the seven
year slump is about. Is that now you've got like
two or three kids running around, you don't get to
see your spouse. Is often, but again it's a matter
of if you know this is going to be an issue,
pay attention to it. And statistically people with more kids
(16:11):
are less likely to get divorced, but that might just
be because you have more invested in this marriage once
you have more children involved, So people stay together for
the kids. Whereas Helen Fisher would say if they're over
the age of five, I mean helef Micher or herself
wouldn't say this, but she's saying our evolutionary ancestors would
have said, if they're five, they can make themselves a
(16:33):
beta Brnjeli sandwich. He'll be fine, fine, resilient. They're not
gonna die because they're eaten by a wolf at this age.
So when we asked a question of whether the seven
year itch is a real thing, I think our answer
is yes, absolutely, yes, But it's got like this asterisk
at the end of it. And it could also be
a three year itch, a four year itch, a ten
(16:54):
year itch, an eleven year itch. I think that at
any marriage there's going to be some peer where things
aren't great. Yeah, and it's the question of whether you
stay together or try and work it out, or if
you you know, whether you scratch that itch or you
ignore it. Ooh, how about that? Was nice? Like that?
I like that. I've been working on that one. That's
probably good. We got it in one Friends podcast. So
(17:17):
let us know your thoughts about the seven year itch.
Have you do you have an itch you can't scratch?
Let us know it's mom stuff at hellsuffworks dot com.
In the meantime, I let us read a couple letters.
All right, Christin, I've got an email here from Meredith,
who writes on our Home Economics podcast, and she says,
(17:38):
I had never thought about the origins of this subject
and now agree that a condescending perception of the domestic
arts is misplaced. I would like to note, however, that
not all home at courses have the rigor of those
described in the podcast. Perhaps this is the result of
the condescension. But learning how to make a friendship bracelet
and to find my personal color palette does not a
rigorous preparation for anything make. Also, I'm not sure scientific
(17:59):
structuring of the home has been a complete good. Yes,
teaching women how to maximize their time and how to
stave off germs and infections has been wonderful, But the
nineteenth century scientific boon also created norms and standards in
a way of looking at child rearing that led to
a lot of emphasis on perfecting one surroundings or parenting style,
or following a certain manual and not screwing anything up
(18:19):
for fear your child would turn in to the wrong sort. Somehow,
the domestic science scene that meant to make life easier
for women has added the fairly new notion that mothers
and homemakers can mold the perfect minds and create the
perfect home. They become obsessed with perfection. As a result,
often blame the mother for anything that goes wrong with kids.
This idea is the result of many trends, not just
in home economics, but scientific approaches to time management, housekeeping,
(18:42):
and childbearing have had some unintended repercussions on the American
women's psyche. Zarago kind of an interesting point on that. Well.
I have an email here from Ariel and she's writing
in response to our podcast on nanny's because she used
to be a former live in nanny for two years
right out of college, and she says women who have
nanny's so they can spend their days reading US Weekly, shopping,
(19:05):
watching soap operas, and talking on the phone with their
friends should most definitely feel guilty. During my two years,
I cared for the three kids, cooked, taught the little
one his alphabet, potty, trained him read in bedtime stories,
and got to experience so many milestones in his life
that it almost made me feel guilty. What mother wouldn't
want to be watching her child discover the world, especially
(19:25):
when she has all the money, time, and resources to
do so. She was physically present, but emotionally unavailable to
her family. You can pay someone to watch your kids
while you're away, make their lunches, help them with their homework. Understandable,
but you can't pay someone to be the constant presence
in their lives when you can't be there for them.
Kids aren't stupid, They're very perceptive. They know what your
(19:46):
priorities are, and they do understand that adults have to
work and be gone sometimes, but they can also tell
if you're more interested in Britney Spears's latest debacle in
the A plus they got on their math dest So
thank you Ariel for that person perspective again. Our email
is mom Stuff at HowStuffWorks dot com. You can also
find us on Facebook and Twitter at mom Stuff Podcasts.
(20:10):
And then also you can check out a blog during
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(20:31):
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It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented twenty twelve Camri. It's ready.
Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you? From
houstuff works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Kristen and I'm Molly. Molly. Got a little fact
(00:21):
about myself to share with you. Add to my trading
card collection. I know its collection has grown far too large,
but here's another one. Okay, So in terms of my
knowledge of movies, contemporary movies, I got some gaps. I
have noticed that I had some big gaps in there,
(00:42):
all right. One time I said ten points to Griffindor
and Kristin had no idea what I was talking about.
All right, you know what, Harry Potter, that's another that's
just a side note. Nay, I just got that reference
right now. So maybe I'm not so behind the times
as you think I am. But if you were to
rewind and give me some kind of oh, I don't know,
nineteen fifties, a musical number, something, you can bust it out.
(01:09):
I can bust it out. So you're saying old movies,
old movie is where it's at. What I'm trying to
say to you, Mollie, is that I grew up watching
a lot of old movies, one of which was The
Seven Year Itch starring Marilyn Monroe, of course and Tom Mule,
And it's about this guy whose family leaves town for
(01:30):
the summer and he stays in the city. I guess
to work. I haven't seen it in a while. And
he has this super super foxy neighbor, Miss Marilyn Monroe.
This is also the movie with the famous scene where
she's standing over the subway grate, right, the wind blows
up her her dress, and he's very tempted to have
(01:51):
an affair with her because she's Marilyn Monroe, so of
course you would want to hence the whole The Seven
Year Itch, right. I think the work he's doing is
he's editing a book by some crazy doctor and the psychiatrist,
and the psychiatrists has a theory that men are tempted
to stray after exactly seven years. So at the very
(02:12):
time he's dealing with this super foxy neighbor, to use
Kristen's words, he's got this book in front of him
which says, oh, this is natural. You should feel this way. Now.
Let me tell you though, when you are maybe I
don't know, eight or nine years old watching this movie.
I mean, this movie went straight over my head. I
remember thinking that it was like, I don't really know
(02:34):
what the buzz about this, about this new Tommy ele
movie is as I said, drinking my tea, Oh that
little vision of little Kristin not understanding so classic. How
many stars would you give it? Uh? You know, but again,
well it's been a long time since I've seen it.
But of your memories, of my memories, out of five stars, sure, okay,
(02:58):
little Kristin would probably give it. I'd probably give it
three stars because I did really like Marilyn Monroe movies
and it was in color. Yeah, it has some good
good costume me. So when you're when your little kid
complaying black and white to color pictures, do colors always
get an extra star? Yeah? And technicolor gets a star
and a half. Okay. Anyway, so I didn't get seven
year itch back then, but today today you're all grown
(03:21):
up where I'm all grown up. I get the innu
windows finally, and we know so much about the seven
year itch. We're gonna we're gonna talk about whether or
not this really exists, right, because I think you see
it all the time in the newspapers. I mean they've
used it for baseball players who are leaving teams after
seven years. They use it when marriages break up. It's
(03:42):
become just this very common term in the lexicon, the
seven year itch. After seven years, you've got to move along.
And the reason you've got to start with this movie
is because the whole reason this phrase is in our
vocabulary is because of the movie. Originally, when the play
started to play, when the guy was riding the play,
the main character been married for ten years, and it
(04:05):
was only because he used to work as a joke
writer for this hillbilly comedian who used to say something like,
I know the girl's over twenty one because she's had
the seven year itch four times seven year itch meaning
some weird skin disease, which was its common usage before
the nineteen fifties. When this play came out, he just
(04:25):
borrowed the term from the comedian and changed the character's
marriage from ten years to seven. Yeah, so we have
George Axelrod to thank for that. The play right, the
play right. But William Sapphire In the New York Times,
the linguists tried to go back and see where Axelrod
even got that seven year itch, and he goes all
(04:46):
the way back to I think the earliest date that
he gets is eighteen fifty four with Henry David Thurreau,
who writes these maybe but the spring months in the
life of the race, if we have had the seven
years itch, we have not seen the seventeen year locus yet.
In concude that is I think my favorite Henry David
(05:08):
Threau impression of her. I really wish you'd been around
when I read that book in college. It is very authentic.
So yeah, but Throaw doesn't really explain with that. Yeah,
we got nothing from that. With most things that Threau
tries to explain, I don't know why I've got such
a hang up on Thureau. But yeah, he traces it
through some other usages in the early nineteen hundreds, and
(05:29):
it always sort of means this unidentifiable illness. Yeah, I
liked this one. This is from Carl Sandberg in the
nineteen thirty six poem The People Yes, and the line
is may you have the seven year itch? Was answered,
I hope your wife eats crackers in bed. So it's
something annoying, it's a little pest it's a pest. And
it's only because seven is used so often biblically and
(05:54):
in uh you know, repetition, and this comedian picked it up,
used in the joke, and inspired Axel Rod the playwright.
So I really have the comedian Henry David Thereau and
the playwright to thank for this common phrase and all
rooted in the Bible exactly, going back to the Bible's
obsession with the number seven and uh you know. The
(06:15):
question then becomes did they hit on something accidentally? Is
it actually a real phenomenon, particularly in a relationship, because
here we go, people get ready. In the United States,
the median length of a marriage is roughly seven years.
Oh my goodness. It's like all those people were just
(06:39):
It's like Henry David thureau knew something was about sitting
alone in a cabin. He was like, if I were married,
I bet it well the last for seven years, I'm
just gonna hang out by myself on this pond. And
the row was onto something that pay my taxes. Now,
if a marriage does cross that seven year, all right,
(07:00):
sofa we get Let's say we get to ten years.
Research has also shown that you will have already gone
through two major slumps, one of which does happen at
seven years. Yes, so they're saying that people who stay
married for that decade they have to weather that slump.
But the first slump comes it around four years. That's
(07:23):
when the honeymoon effect is gone, right, and they're really
surprised to find this slump that, you know, after four years,
only four years. Yeah, it's kind of disappointing. You haven't
even used your china a whole bunch yet, I know.
But anyway, go ahead, go ahead. Yeah, after four years,
there's this big slump, and it may be because you know,
you're getting used to your roles, maybe marriage is lost,
(07:43):
it's luster, maybe you've started to have children. So in
this first slump at four years, they're saying that, you know,
the passion might have dimmed a little bit. You can't
maintain that level of passion forever. So we've talked about
you're getting used to your new roles. Maybe now you're
getting a little bored. That's the first slump, and then
it might pick back up as you start to have children,
(08:04):
as you start to you know, get in your groove,
and then again it's going to go down at seven Yeah,
those are the two main hurdles that a newly married
couple has looked forward to. Now, backing up this idea
of that four year slump, we have one of our
favorite women in the world, noted anthropologists Helen Fisher, right,
(08:25):
and it did not surprise Helen Fisher that these researchers
in nineteen ninety nine found those four and seven year slumps.
She would argue that instead of the seven yearch we
should call it the four year itch, which again is
not very enchanting to think about when you're getting married.
But she has looked at a bunch of societies, collected
one hundred and sixty societies, and in all of these societies,
(08:48):
marriage is valued. You know, they all are getting married
and they part around four years. That's when divorces peak.
And so you know, while we said the median of
American marriages is seven, there are a lot of these
marriages they're saying where the parachute doesn't open. To borrow
one phrase from one of these articles, and she's saying,
(09:09):
Helen Fisher is saying that there's a reason why that
four years is significant, and it goes back to one
of our favorite topics of discussion evolution and our early
human ancestors. And Fisher points out that in the olden
days we go back in time a little bit, that
a woman and a man would have a child, that
the child being a human baby is sort of you know,
(09:32):
subject to the elements. It takes a lot of parenting
to get a kid to be a toddler, especially back
then when survival rates were scarce and human births were
spaced out four years apart. Because the woman would have
the child, she'd breastfeed, they would get it to become
a toddler, a little bit more self sufficient, not really,
but you know, it had a better chance of survival. Yeah,
(09:54):
And then she's saying that to ensure genetic diversity among
your children, to give all your chilln the best chance
at survival, you wouldn't want to just have another baby
with that that same gene pool, right, You'd want to
try a different gene pool because maybe that could be
even stronger and cooler, and even you'd want to mix
up the major histoic compatibility complexes clearly exactly. I mean,
(10:17):
so what they would do is at four years the
kid could probably be taken care of by you know,
the village you know, he wouldn't need just his mother
and his father anymore. So four years the mother and
the father might go have a child with someone else. Sure,
So she's saying that what's been passed down to us
is this desire to have a child with someone new
every four years, and a lot of times these divorces
(10:39):
will happen at the height of our reproductive years. So
Fisher thinks that we are just biologically driven to wanna
maybe split up, maybe see somebody a new after a
handful of years. I mean, think about how many things
we've talked about on this podcast, Christ that are driven
by some subconscious desire to give our child the best
(10:59):
genetic makeup it could possibly have. I mean, we've talked
about how to smell, as you talked about with the MHCs.
It drives, it drives our attraction to other people. So
she's saying that this four year mark, somehow, subconsciously in
our body, we know that's the time in which we've
had a child, got it to the age of four
or five, where it can be taken care of by
(11:19):
relatives and friends, and then it's time to move on, right.
And you know, if we think that four years is
a short amount of time to start getting the cold feet.
There was another article from two thousand and seven in
the New York Times that covered research on a three
year itch. So the time that we're going to be happy,
(11:41):
like really you know, on fire with somebody is getting
the window is getting smaller and smaller, Molly. But you know,
I think that that three year itch is particularly American phenomenon.
It's very US centric and we're talking about marriages. The
one thing that a lot of this research leaves out
is the idea of cohabitating couples who are not married,
may not even plan to get married right, and they
(12:02):
don't show up in this research because what the researchers
are always looking at is demographic data about when the
marriage is actually go to divorce court. And Fisher herself
points out that in the US, we tend to divorce
a year earlier than the four year ritch, in about
two or three years, because chemistry, if you look at
our chemistry in her biology, that's when that spark, that
romantic spark starts to fade, the sizzle fizzles, And she
(12:25):
just says, Americans have gotten really good at jumping that
gun of this isn't this isn't as perfect as it
was when we started. Let's go ahead and cut line,
and we definitely just seem to jump the gun in
the US compared to our friends across the pond, because
there was an article in the UK Times that looked
at data from the Office of National Statistics and found
(12:48):
that eleven years is the average time the divorce couples
had stayed together before their marriage broke up. Right, You're
always seeing articles come out of the UK about the
ten or the eleven year itch. So it definitely varies
by country. But a lot of these people, no matter
what year they come up with, whether it's three years,
ten years, eleven years, there's always this question of, you know,
should we not have such stigma around divorce, should we
(13:11):
just expect couples to divorce at ten or eleven years?
And there's always a quote about how you know, it
can be a self fulfilling prophecy. I think if you
look for reasons to be unhappy at three years, four years,
at seven years, at ten years, you can find them.
And so what they're saying, you know, relationship experts, economists,
everyone is just saying you got to give your marriage
more attention at these points in which there might be
(13:34):
a slump. You know, that's sort of why the researchers
put out that study about the four and the seven
years slump. They're saying, pay more attention to the other person.
Then maybe it's if it's something you know about, it's
something you can get through. And I think we also
have to take into account how our longer lifespans are
kind of changing the terms of marriage. Because let's say, oh,
(13:59):
in the medieval times, couples would stay together forever, but
forever meant like eleven, twelve, thirteen years, because there I
would just die. Yeah. But today, when we get married,
if we stay till death to his part, I mean
death is coming later and later, and so we're expected
to stay with each other longer than we ever have before.
(14:22):
So I mean it's you can look at either way.
You can either be sort of, I guess, an excuse
to get you out of a bad relationship, like yeah,
I'm sorry, like I'm looking for we're not meant to
be together that long. You can look at it as
a way to pay attention to relationship and get through
what might be a really hard time. You can do
what one politician did in Bavaria. Oh, this was great.
(14:42):
Her name is Gabrielli Polly and she was wearing for
the Christian Social Union Party, which is a very conservative
Catholic party, I believe, and I don't think her platform
for the party went over that well. And her proposal
was that every marriage that takes place in Germany should
be limited to seven years. Oh, this was just just
civil marriages. If you get married in the church then okay,
(15:03):
same rules apply. But if you have a civil marriage,
it's seven years. You'll you can either re up basically
and get another seven years under your belt, or it's
just dissolved and you don't have to just walk away. Yeah,
you don't have to fool with divorce court or anything
like that. So, you know, it's I don't think that's
something that's gonna fly in in our society where we're
(15:25):
big on romance and the the till deathtyp part thing.
But again, our marriages don't last that long, so don't
really last that long. But one thing that we have
not touched on is whether or not kids play a
role in this seven year itch. Tom Yules character had children,
you know, maybe maybe that could have been what was
driving him so crazy he was feeling like a dowdy
(15:47):
old daddy. Well, you know, in that very first day
we talked about the four and the seven year slump.
That's what the researchers say that second slump, the seven
year slump is about. Is that now you've got like
two or three kids running around, you don't get to
see your spouse. Is often, but again it's a matter
of if you know this is going to be an issue,
pay attention to it. And statistically people with more kids
(16:11):
are less likely to get divorced, but that might just
be because you have more invested in this marriage once
you have more children involved, So people stay together for
the kids. Whereas Helen Fisher would say if they're over
the age of five, I mean helef Micher or herself
wouldn't say this, but she's saying our evolutionary ancestors would
have said, if they're five, they can make themselves a
(16:33):
beta Brnjeli sandwich. He'll be fine, fine, resilient. They're not
gonna die because they're eaten by a wolf at this age.
So when we asked a question of whether the seven
year itch is a real thing, I think our answer
is yes, absolutely, yes, But it's got like this asterisk
at the end of it. And it could also be
a three year itch, a four year itch, a ten
(16:54):
year itch, an eleven year itch. I think that at
any marriage there's going to be some peer where things
aren't great. Yeah, and it's the question of whether you
stay together or try and work it out, or if
you you know, whether you scratch that itch or you
ignore it. Ooh, how about that? Was nice? Like that?
I like that. I've been working on that one. That's
probably good. We got it in one Friends podcast. So
(17:17):
let us know your thoughts about the seven year itch.
Have you do you have an itch you can't scratch?
Let us know it's mom stuff at hellsuffworks dot com.
In the meantime, I let us read a couple letters.
All right, Christin, I've got an email here from Meredith,
who writes on our Home Economics podcast, and she says,
(17:38):
I had never thought about the origins of this subject
and now agree that a condescending perception of the domestic
arts is misplaced. I would like to note, however, that
not all home at courses have the rigor of those
described in the podcast. Perhaps this is the result of
the condescension. But learning how to make a friendship bracelet
and to find my personal color palette does not a
rigorous preparation for anything make. Also, I'm not sure scientific
(17:59):
structuring of the home has been a complete good. Yes,
teaching women how to maximize their time and how to
stave off germs and infections has been wonderful, But the
nineteenth century scientific boon also created norms and standards in
a way of looking at child rearing that led to
a lot of emphasis on perfecting one surroundings or parenting style,
or following a certain manual and not screwing anything up
(18:19):
for fear your child would turn in to the wrong sort. Somehow,
the domestic science scene that meant to make life easier
for women has added the fairly new notion that mothers
and homemakers can mold the perfect minds and create the
perfect home. They become obsessed with perfection. As a result,
often blame the mother for anything that goes wrong with kids.
This idea is the result of many trends, not just
in home economics, but scientific approaches to time management, housekeeping,
(18:42):
and childbearing have had some unintended repercussions on the American
women's psyche. Zarago kind of an interesting point on that. Well.
I have an email here from Ariel and she's writing
in response to our podcast on nanny's because she used
to be a former live in nanny for two years
right out of college, and she says women who have
nanny's so they can spend their days reading US Weekly, shopping,
(19:05):
watching soap operas, and talking on the phone with their
friends should most definitely feel guilty. During my two years,
I cared for the three kids, cooked, taught the little
one his alphabet, potty, trained him read in bedtime stories,
and got to experience so many milestones in his life
that it almost made me feel guilty. What mother wouldn't
want to be watching her child discover the world, especially
(19:25):
when she has all the money, time, and resources to
do so. She was physically present, but emotionally unavailable to
her family. You can pay someone to watch your kids
while you're away, make their lunches, help them with their homework. Understandable,
but you can't pay someone to be the constant presence
in their lives when you can't be there for them.
Kids aren't stupid, They're very perceptive. They know what your
(19:46):
priorities are, and they do understand that adults have to
work and be gone sometimes, but they can also tell
if you're more interested in Britney Spears's latest debacle in
the A plus they got on their math dest So
thank you Ariel for that person perspective again. Our email
is mom Stuff at HowStuffWorks dot com. You can also
find us on Facebook and Twitter at mom Stuff Podcasts.
(20:10):
And then also you can check out a blog during
the week, It's stuff Mom Never told You, and you
can find it on HowStuffWorks dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks dot com.
To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast
icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The
(20:31):
house Stuffworks iPhone app has a ride. Download it today
on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented twenty twelve Camra.
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