by Zachary Gorsuch
January 25, 2025
Imagine being interviewed for a job and when asked the question: “What is your 5-year plan?” you respond “To be somewhere else in 5 years, that’s for sure!”. Or “Will you marry me?” and the response is “Of course I will! For 5 to 7 years, but I am firm on that 7th year. And I want it in writing.” This all sounds utterly ridiculous, but not as much as you would think.
As you’ve aged into adulthood, have you noticed a sense of unease after around this 5-7 years? Your job has become boring, your relationships stale and unfulfilling. You may become restless and irritable before settling into a warm bath of complacency, or stepping into a tornado of a mid-life crisis. Certainly there are physiological milestones that exist within the passing phases of our lives that, as we age, are naturally occurring. But far too often we accept this as the way it is without stopping and listening to the voice within us that says, “Let me out of this fucking cage!”
The Theory
If you look up the “Seven Year Theory”, it’s basically about failing marriages, with the exception of Rudolph Steiner’s theory about the ten, 7-year cycles of human development where we can come to understand the biological process of aging as the source of many of our feelings; he also founded the Waldorf approach to education. While the “7-Year Itch” originated as the title of a 1955 film starring Marilyn Monroe, it has since become a standard idiom for referencing the point in a relationship where those involved feel as if they’ve become increasingly dissatisfied and restless with their accord.
Most of us have been conditioned to believe that the two important commitments in life are: our career and our marriage. But the divorce rate is astronomically higher than that of the unemployment rate in America, so there appears to be some jockeying taking place atop what resembles more of a weighted scale rather than a pedestal; that is if you accept the notion that these are in fact the two most important commitments most of us will face, respectively.
If this is the case then something’s always got to give and these days it appears to be more of a competition for our time then an attempt to balance this dualistic construct that we’ve cultivated. Eminent volatility makes sense, especially if you’re spending more time with people at your work than the people in your home. Not to mention, the, ehem, money.
It’s not as simple as choosing the career over the spouse, but more about how complicated, disillusioned and busy our lives become as time goes by. And this happens to hit us where it hurts the most, what is closest to us emotionally, but still isn’t “us”.
We become so used to the frenzy that we constantly grab onto ideas that pull us even further into a mire of behaviors that perpetuate conflict: hit the bar or your weed dealer before going home (it’ll take the edge off a bit), stop off at Marshall’s for some shopping (ugh, these lines), pop in the drive-thru before dinner (Jesus, her cooking sucks; sorry I’m late, ugh, the lines), plop on the couch after a half-enthusiastically eaten dinner and click on the news (man, the world is falling apart).
Over-Committed and Anxious
The 5-7 year mark also happens to be when a lot of couples have either decided to have children or not have children. And this is the dealbreaker. These little ones need their parents more than anything in the world and we do what we believe is our best in maintaining some version of balance in and outside of this accord.
But we grind ourselves into a routine of working so hard to pay the bills and put food on the table, we often assume that the “rest of it” is taken care of: by our children’s school, their mom or dad, grandparents, our landlord. But this sets up some seriously catastrophic arrangement of domestic dominoes. Even when all is well within this construct, there is imbalance. The dominoes don’t fall into the next when something feels off, they explode:
“Chop, Chop! You’re walking now, you should be able to put your shoes on and find your way to the damn car. We are going to be late for daycare, now move it!” Yes, please hurry while we pump away at our desk all day to pay for this shit.
That’s an ugly portrayal but unfortunately not uncommon. The child is the wrench in the gears of many households, even the happy ones, which sends the whole system spinning out of control and into chaos. Sadly, the pedestal was already too full, the scale too weighted and “I’ve already kinda committed to this other thing for, like, I dunno, until I retire. Okay, see you then, I mean after school! Oh and you will be around forever to drive me to all my doctors and wipe my ass for me when I’m old (like 65), right?”
What we are doing is accepting the easiest offer with hubris and the knowledge that our futures will hold up, without actually facing that voice still rattling its own cage inside of us. We’re investing in what we think is right for us and our families and we further build upon that idea, telling ourselves, “Well, I’ve put this much time in as a salesman in tech, it’d be a total waste to try something else at this point. We gotta think about our future here, honey. Now I said ‘pass the goddamn butter!’” The kids have their own patterns and we should be attuned to them as we hopefully involve ourselves as much as we can in their personal development. And never raise your voice in anger near them.
ScratchingYour Own Itch
As far as our own personal development goes (and yes, we should all be developing until we die, not decaying through our last 30 years of life) what is the difference between a midlife crisis cycle: i.e. Steiner’s theory; and unhappiness: i.e. the Marilyn Monroe film? I’m not sure that there is a difference because we all are living somewhere in the middle of life. And because that existence, as aforementioned, has become so vastly complicated and frenzied, we might as well be experiencing both. Mental illness, addictions, media, stress, fast food, existentialist gloom, traffic; there are so many external factors pushing the needle toward unhappiness that it shouldn’t really make any difference whether Harold is depressed or simply aging sadly.
Take a moment to consider just how blocked your time is when it comes to work and family. Does it ever feel like you’re living two or even multiple lives? Most of us feel that at least some of the time, but imagine what it would look like, what it would take, to truly turn it into one beautiful life, free from compartments and partitions designed to keep everyone in their place. Would it be possible? Would it even be something that sounds enjoyable to you? Anything is possible, but if the idea of spending more time with your family does not sound appealing, keep reading anyway.
When we think “possibility” we automatically consider what we would have to give up and this is the healthiest way we can approach what is, at this point, a hypothetical fantasy, but a target nonetheless. When we develop a sense of what we may have to let go of, we are already in the early stages of a different type of commitment that involves deliberate action and creativity, even if it’s just a daydream.
Many of us change careers when we’re tired of the old one and stick with our spouses and our families, trying to squeeze in as much as we can with them outside of work hours. But if we are truly feeling restless and dissatisfied every ½ decade or so, maybe we can juggle the idea that our jobs don’t have to be so divided from our personal life. “I would never want to bring my work near my family nor my family near my work”, is a fairly common opinion and I can’t help but think just how sad it is.
So, Now What?
To bridge the gap and avoid the Seven-Year Itch, is to be bold, refusing to accept the constraints set forth by a system that captures our innocence and subverts our curiosity. So far I have found it exponentially more rewarding to work hard with my family than to work hard for and away from them. People may worry that the challenges resulting from working together may bring out the worst in them, but this is only because you have been conditioned by the bad boss mentality. Plus, what better way to teach your kids about life than to give them the opportunity to laugh, cry, struggle and celebrate alongside you? For that is all they want to do in the first place.
My kids have traveled with us for months at a time, they have observed and helped my wife and I run successful businesses and they’ve seized the opportunity to learn from the world around them, as it spins. School, you may ask? With a little bit of creativity, a lot of guts and with absolute commitment to life, mom and I are confident that the more time we can spend together as a unit, a tribe, the more all of us will be able to accomplish. Life’s challenges rarely appear in exactly the way that we anticipate. When it comes, try scratching your itch together.