The seven-year itch is a popular belief, sometimes asserted to have statistical validity, that happiness in a marriage or long-term romantic relationship declines after around seven years.[1]
The phrase was used in the title of the 1952 play The Seven Year Itch by George Axelrod, and gained popularity following the 1955 film adaptation starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell. In his 1913 novel, The Eighth Year, Philip Gibbs attributes the concept to the British judge Sir Francis Jeune.
The phrase has since expanded to indicate cycles of dissatisfaction not only in interpersonal relationships, but in any situation such as working a full-time job or buying a house, where a decrease in happiness and satisfaction is often seen over long periods of time.[citation needed]
The original meaning, prior to Axelrod's play, referred to scabies or skin disease. The phrase "seven-year itch" was used in this sense by Henry David Thoreau in Walden in 1854 and Carl Sandburg in 1936 in The People, Yes. [2][3]