The “Seven Year Itch” Comes Sooner These Days
By Erin S. Stone
In a world of instant gratification, instant communication, instant access to information, it’s no surprise that studies show people’s attention span for working on their marriage has grown shorter too. A recent study from the Max Planck Institute in Germany suggests that couples are at their greatest risk of divorce just before their fifth anniversary. (See Itch Strikes Marriages Around Five-Year Mark, Atlanta Journal Constitution, October 31, 2007). The study of divorce trends in the United States, Russia and the Scandinavian countries attributes this earlier “itch” to separate to factors including more women having careers and being more independent, the challenging experiences of building careers and bearing children in the early years of marriage and the no-fault divorce laws making divorce easier to obtain. The good news from the study is that if you survive the first ten years of marriage, you are more likely to make it for a lifetime.