There are few more complex experiences in life than falling in love – and crucially, maintaining it. So often we’re flooded with philosophical quotes about how to navigate it and what it should feel like. Just as you’ll hear someone say, ‘If it’s meant to be, it’ll be easy’, another will chime in with ‘Nothing in life worth having comes easy’. The conflicting messages make for a whirlwind of confusion – but rarely do we see such a dichotomy when people talk about making a marriage work.
Marriage, or any long-lasting partnership, is often described as bound up in compromise and sacrifice – a worthy pursuit if it means sharing your life with the person you’ve chosen. It can seem daunting to those of us in early relationships or embracing singledom, but it’s also extremely relatable for anyone whose stayed the distance when it comes to love. Particularly, at those tough milestones where everyone seems to hit a rough patch. There’s the two-year-itch (when the high of falling in love again starts to fade) and the seven-year-itch (when boredom can set in) and now, there’s also the four-year-itch.
What is the four-year itch?
The four-year-itch, aka the idea that a relationship or marriage starts to struggle at the four-year-mark, is making the news rounds after tabloids reported that Ellie Goulding and husband Caspar Jopling are ‘spending time apart’ four years after tying the knot. According to the rumour mill, their busy schedules have caused marital problems and while the couple have not discussed divorce, they’re living their lives separately outside of co-parenting their two-year-old son, Arthur.
Now, we should not that none of this has been confirmed by Ellie or Caspar, with the couple declining to comment when contacted by tabloids. There’s every likelihood that this could just be unfounded gossip, but still it got us thinking: how real is the four-year-itch?
For many women, it’s part and parcel of getting married. ‘Everyone talks about the honeymoon phase and that is definitely real but what follows is a period people don’t necessarily discuss so much,’ says Emily*, 39 from Bath. ‘As the reality of what’s ahead starts to sink in, you know questions like ‘I’m really with this man, forever?!’, it can cause pressure and tension between the two of you – and it makes arguments feel a lot more serious.’
Caitlin*, 33 from Manchester, says it’s the same even in long-term relationships. ‘My first relationship was six years, from 15 to 21, and all of the problems started to rear their head at the four-year mark and those last two years were really me clinging on to something that wasn’t working,’ she tells Grazia. ‘I think especially when you start dating quite young, you grow and change so much as a person over four years that you can suddenly hit a point where you think, we’re just not that compatible anymore.’
There’s science to back the four-year-itch theories too. Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University, was researching the seven-year-itch when she discovered there’s a pattern in four-year marriages too. Collecting global data on marriage and divorce, she found that for couples who divorced, the most common length of marriage was four years.
Looking at patterns of bonding in birds and mammals to understand if there’s a biological reason for this, Fisher found that birds and mammals more often stay together only long enough to rear their young through infancy and early toddlerhood.
‘Humans retain traces of this natural reproductive pattern,’ she told Scientific American. ‘In more contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, women tend to bear their children about four years apart. Moreover, in these societies after a child is weaned at around age four, the child often joins a playgroup and is cared for by older siblings and relatives. This care structure allows unhappy couples to break up and find a more suitable partner with whom to have more young.
‘The four-year divorce peak among modern humans may represent the remains of an ancestral reproductive strategy to stay bonded at least long enough to raise a child through infancy and early toddlerhood,’ Fisher concluded. ‘Thus, we may have a natural weak point in our unions. By understanding this susceptibility in our human nature, we might become better able to anticipate, and perhaps be able to avoid, the four-year itch.’
Of course, there are other more societal and psychological reasons the four-year mark can be difficult. 'Developmentally the honeymoon phase often ends between 18 months to two years, and after this stage couples learn how to be comfortable together with differences in a stage known as differentiation,' explains sex and relationship counsellor Ness Cooper. 'Common milestones that lead to many couples having to learn differentiation between each other are often things such as: whether to get married, pregnancy, children’s care needs changing, putting in an application for a mortgage, a family loss.
'Generally speaking, for many couples one of these will occur around the four year mark,' Ness continues. 'These are things that can make you realise you and your partner have some differences and you may need to learn to navigate around them healthily, learning to live with those differences or find solutions that make them manageable.'
It doesn't have to mean the end then. So, how to we combat the four-year itch?
'Don’t overly focus on past conflicts as you’re building negative neural pathways, aim to focus on positive moments,' advises Ness. 'If you’re struggling with this think about past resolutions and how they made you feel. Realise that individual differences are important. Remember that whilst you may be focusing on the relationship that you also need to take time for self care and allow yourself to grow individually whilst working on your relationship together.'
For Emily, working through the four-year itch made her marriage even stronger - and it's she's recently celebrated eight years with her husband. ‘You just have to find your rhythm and create new boundaries, ones which will see you through huge life events such as having a baby, moving house, or deciding whose family to spend Christmas with every year,’ she says. ‘Of course, these events aren’t exclusive to a marriage, but the legally binding document created extra pressure for us. Shit gets very real, and you can look back on the days before marriage – when you were in a relationship - as far easier.’
It all goes to prove that what they say about marriage is true then. While falling in love should be easy, maintaining a marriage takes work – not just on who you are as a couple, but who you are as an individual too.
*names have been changed