Getting it on and on and on

The New York Times has a piece titled 'The Shelf Life of Bliss', on the proverbial itch that may or may not occur after a period of 7 years. Or more. Or less.

This has always struck me as an odd concept. I probably first encountered it in Cosmopolitan magazine, that fount of information on all the sex and relationships my teenage self wasn't having. The subject came up with perhaps more relevance in college. Gam was warned by a senior male resident not to move out with me because people who did always got sick of each other within 6 months, and besides, it would cramp his style and prevent him from bringing home a different woman every night. Or something like that. Gam thought it was very funny. We discussed the subject of a 'honeymoon period' and how we would know if it was over, and what it might mean. At that time we were pretty much having sex constantly- missing classes and frustrating any friends who thought we should also be having a social life. The idea that at some arbitrary point the feelings we had for each would start to dim was laughable. It still is.

“There is not necessarily anything magical about year three,” Professor Musick said. “We know that typically when marriages end in divorce, half end before seven or so years and half end after. This is the same idea.”

At a bit over 5 years, I suppose we can say for certain that there definitely isn't some magical dissolution of love and lust after 3. A cynic might say we're not yet at the magic number. I think the more likely reason for myth of the lucky number 7 is that a lot of people have a culturally-based expectation that love must by necessity lead to marriage, and a great many also confuse the initial heady chemical reaction of lust for love. By the time it wears off, they have a ring on their finger and may well be raising a kid or two. They do their best to conform to society's expectations, finally realise they can't bear the idea of spending the rest of their life with this person and decide to call it quits.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the findings have some foundation.

Bart Blasengame, a 33-year-old freelance writer from Portland, Ore., was with his former fiancée for three years. “I felt like, by year three, we were both forcing it,” he recalled.

“It’s the whole cliché of pursuit,” he said. “Your dates are planned out like some Drew Barrymore romantic comedy with unicorns and rainbows. By year two, we were cruising along, living together, relatively happy. But from a growth standpoint things had started to atrophy. We were happy, content is a better word, but there was no spark.”

There is a very fairytale aura around our culture's perception of love and marriage. The idea that a ring on a finger, a solid commitment, acts as an 'off' switch for the same biochemical factors that led to our first highschool crush, the first sexual experience, sexual fantasies and any other attractions, is a myth. A harmful one at that. The realisation that relationships aren't exactly like a Hollywood romantic comedy and the experience of sexual desire for a person other than one's partner may lead people, wrongly, to question the relationship.



I think these kind of myths underlie, for example, the negative response that many women have to a male partner's use of pornography for masturbation- the idea that sexual attraction to another woman is equal to sexual infidelity. Or the 'office romance', where proximity between two co-workers leads to the magnetic first attraction, leading them to wonder if problems exist in their home relationship that have somehow driven them to have feelings for another person. Perhaps they look for problems where there were none, or perhaps they look for problems that suddenly loom a lot larger when they provide an apparent answer for a culturally manufactured question. The real answer lies in human biology and the drive for sex.

But a dissipation of that all-enveloping rapture is no reason to give up on a relationship, many people insist.

“At times, sure, I’m bored,” said Sean Meehan, 51, a therapist from West Hartford who has been married for 14 years. “Who isn’t? But you talk about it with your spouse and you can switch things up.”

That's the sort of solution that is only effective for a relationship that is fundamentally workable. Plenty are not. I'm sure I'm not alone in having found a guy attractive and yet known that never in a million years would I find them suitable for a long term relationship. Not every relationship is workable or worthwhile maintaining, and plenty of unhappy marriages have continued under the impression that this is somehow the case.

Paul D. Neuthaler, a divorce mediator in Westchester, said: “The fizzle tends to bubble out within a three- to five-year period when the basis for the marriage was purely physical or related to some attraction not closely associated with each partner’s essential character.”

I think that pretty much nails it. A relationship without a strong inherent sexual attraction might be a chore, but a relationship where one partner displays character traits or morals unacceptable to the other is going to be downright repulsive.

Permanent link to article here.