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Recent research suggests there is reason for the straying heart.
Now, a study suggests that such an itch is often a reality. An evaluation of 93 married couples during their first 10 years of marriage showed two typical periods of decline. The marriages then tended to stabilize before another decline set in around year eight, says Lawrence A. Kurdek, Ph.D., the study's author and a psychologist at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Couples experiencing the seven year itch disagree with each other more, become less affectionate, share fewer activities, and express overall dissatisfaction with their marriages, says Kurdek, whose study was published in the September 1999 issue of the journal Developmental Psychology . The seven-year mark is coincidental, says Kurdek.