The five year mark and the test of your relationship
The jokes in terms of time and relationships used to be around the seven year mark simply because of the iconic Marilyn Monroe 1955 film, The Seven Year Itch. Real-life statistics indicate, however, that the real critical point in any relationship is the five year mark.
There are good reasons for that. It takes, about two years, for the glow of any relationship to begin to get tarnished by the wear and tear of every day life. At that point the partners in it have a real choice to make: either start working on it, understanding the real reasons which work to keep you together and appreciating the many different aspects of being with someone they love or, they can decide to simply get on with it and ignore everything and simply live their lives.
The former choice is hard to make. It means that the moment the novelty of being with someone has totally worn off and you know them not just as other people see them but as people who you have seen, known, felt and touched in every personal way imaginable, you also reach a place where you begin to rationally understand why you are in love with them and why life together is better than life alone or with someone else. This requires a certain degree of self-knowledge, the ability to think analytically about yourself and the need to then do something about the things you discover which you do not like.
The latter is much easier. By refusing to accept that something is wrong you can extend the ability to delude yourself for quite some time. By the time you get to year five the accumulated ‘ills’ which have not been dealt with begin to break out into some major symptoms. By then the two partners are so far apart in terms of living their own lives that it is always a wonder when affairs do not happen, not when they do.
Money, fame and success are not immune to this relationship life curve either. Tiger Wood’s marriage to Elin Nordegren ran into issues (publicly at least) at the five year mark. Five years is also what it took for Sandra Bullock’s marriage to Jessie to ran aground, Brad Pitt’s and Jennifer Anniston’s fairy tale marriage ended after five years and, as I am writing this, Hale Berry announced her split from long-term partner Gabriel Aubry after, you guessed it, five years together.
If your relationship has just passed the five year mark (or is about to) there are some deep questions you should perhaps be able to answer:
1. Are you leading separate lives? – if you no longer have that much in common and you are fast drifting apart in terms of professional and social paths the chances are your relationship is on a clock that’s winding down.
2. Do you still feel a thrill deep in your chest at the sight of your partner? – Your body knows how you feel no mater what you tell yourselves in public. If the thrill is not there any more something fundamental has changed.
3. Can you consider life without your partner? – The instinctive answer here should be ‘no’. If you can contemplate life without your partner with equanimity then it’s fair to assume the fizz has long gone and you’re both just going through the motions.
4. Do you have sex as frequently as you could? – No matter the excuse, the frequency of your sex life is the barometer of your relationship. If the frequency has dropped off then you’re not in as good a place relationship-wise as you were when you first met each other.
5. Would you consider having sex with someone else? – This is the clincher of a question. If you are in a relationship with a person who fulfils you in every way other people should not even exist for you let alone beep on your potential sex-partner alert radar. If you entertain fantasies in which your partner is not involved in the death knell has already sounded, and now it’s just a question of time.
The five questions above are just the kind of litmus test which when applied to your relationship can show you exactly where you are in terms of its development curve. What you then do with the knowledge is entirely up to you.
