7 year Itch - Normalizing Relationships’ Plateaus
Relationships are all unicorns and rainbows until romantic boredom waves hello. You can’t fall out of love - you can only fall out of novelty. Butterfly inducing supply is running on empty. Some will fall in the arms of infidelity while on their way to get their next refill.
Love is a living entity that can’t live exclusively off stomach butterflies forever. In fact, true and profound love can only emerge after the honeymoon phase has played its part in the beginning of a love story. We are fooling ourselves if we rely solely on the magic trio of chemicals that make our brain go cray cray in the early days of a new forming romance to keep our love alive.
We love a good climax, except when it comes in the form of the 7 year itch. Whatever that goes up, must hit a plateau eventually. No more fun on the rollercoaster ride of romantic love? It doesn’t have to be that way!
It’s important we don’t hold our partner up to fairy tales standards. I’m sorry to break it off to you, but romantic love isn’t supposed to be boredom proof. More than that is the fact that our partner isn’t supposed to entertain the living fuck out of us at all times. That’s our own job, if that is even what we wish for.
Romantic relationships are only free of boredom in movies and that’s namely because those movies never show us what the day-to-day life of long term couples look like. Good luck sucking money from people if you show them the shitty life they’re already trying to escape from the moment they open their tv.
Show them what they can’t have just so they build their entire love narrative on an ideal that will never come to life outside of their imagination. Now watch them run in circles their whole lives trying to find the person that can keep their heart happy for the longest, failing to realize that no one will ever measure up to the task.
Happiness that is reliant on external factors to ensure its survival has a short lifespan - much like stomach butterflies. Bottom line is - don’t try to catch butterflies - try catching good enough imperfect love - the only standard worth striving toward.
