The '7 Year Itch' When Marriage Dissatisfaction Peaks & What You Can Do About It (At Any Point): Episode 328
EmPowered Couples with The Freemans
Aaron & Jocelyn Freeman
5.0 • 589 Ratings
🗓️ 30 January 2024
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You have heard about the "7 Year Itch" in a marriage. Though that was the name of a Marilyn Monroe movie in 1955, studies have shown that a couples satisfaction in marriage hits a low around 10 years into a marriage. Whether you've been together 2 years, 10 years, or 30+ years, you'll get a lot out of this episode by understanding what couples lose sight of and causes an increase of dissatisfaction.
We dive into:
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What the studies say about the "peak of dissatisfaction" being around year 10 together
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The actions that lead a couple to these rough patches
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What to do about it so you two can stay satisfied or boost it up, no matter how long you've been together.
As you listen, make sure you join our upcoming 30-Day Couples Challenge here.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Empower Couples podcast. |
| 0:03.0 | We're here you get modern, non-boring relationship advice for you and your partner to communicate like pros, fight smarter, and stay on the same team no matter the challenge that you face. |
| 0:13.1 | I am one of your host, Erin Freeman. |
| 0:14.7 | And I'm Jocelyn Freeman, but you all just know us as the Freeman's. |
| 0:17.6 | And this episode is the seven-year itch. |
| 0:27.5 | When marriage dissatisfaction peaks, and then what you can do about it at any point, not just the seven years. So I hope we can all agree that longevity, meaning how long you stay together, is not the only important factor. |
| 0:35.5 | What should be equally important is satisfaction, fulfillment. |
| 0:41.8 | It's not like, yeah, let's just survive the next 40 years together just because we said that, right? |
| 0:47.5 | And so today's episode really will provide you with some clarity, no matter the stage that you're at in the relationship, |
| 0:54.5 | whether you are together for two years so far or you've been together for 30 plus years. |
| 1:00.2 | Truly, the points we're going to give you are important to realize at any point. |
| 1:04.7 | Yeah. |
| 1:05.3 | And, you know, there are, from a science perspective, and the science that studies relationships is actually social |
| 1:12.0 | psychology so there are a lot of different ways that people have tried to measure relationship's |
| 1:18.6 | success and like you said one would be to say duration and I don't think that too many people |
| 1:25.7 | only use that metric because you can be together a long time and not even be happy. |
| 1:30.4 | And so then happiness would be another way to measure it or love. |
| 1:33.6 | But science has really identified satisfaction as the key measurement for the quote unquote success of marriages. And personally, I like it because as simple as |
| 1:48.6 | we can make it, satisfaction then can also give us a conversation about love and happiness, but also |
| 1:55.6 | fulfillment. And then if you have that over a long period of time, okay, yeah, that makes more |
| 2:00.4 | sense on the type of success we're all looking for long period of time, okay, yeah, that makes more sense on the type |
| 2:01.3 | of success we're all looking for. And of course, satisfaction is a subjective experience. And so we're |
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