We’re proof the seven-year itch is real
Bev Butler, 41, is a fitness instructor and also works in telecoms. She lives in lancaster with second husband Jason, 48, an account manager. She was married to lloyd Williamson, 42, a chef, for seven years and they have a son Oliver, 18. lloyd lives near lancaster with his partner of eight years liz, 38, a seamstress, and their sons Finn, four, and tor, 18 months.
SHE SAYS:
Dining out in a restaurant on our seventh wedding anniversary in July 2000, Lloyd and I should have been celebrating. But instead, we were agreeing to a divorce.
Ironically, it was one of the happiest evenings we’d spent together since marrying in 1993, perhaps because the frustrations of being stuck in an ailing marriage together had lifted.
Lloyd and I got together when I was 17 and he 18. After two years we decided to marry. My parents thought we were too young, but didn’t argue, as I’m headstrong.
One of the reasons for being so keen to marry was that we hadn’t had sex. We have religious families and so we felt it was right to wait until we were married. We lost our virginity on our wedding night when I was 20.
But the transition from teenage sweethearts to married 20somethings in a rented flat was a shock. Then, when I was 23, we had our son Oliver. That first year after he was born was magical.
Lloyd was a fantastic dad, but I gradually realised that while he doted on Oliver, he paid little attention to me. Over the next three years our sex and social lives became non-existent.
The most we did together was watch TV, which is what we were doing in July 2000 when I blurted out: ‘I’m not happy, you can’t be happy either, let’s do something about it.’
Perhaps that’s where the seven-year itch comes in: it’s long enough to know if it’s not right, but not too long that you feel your lives are so entwined that you can’t move on.
I married again, in 2006, and our relationship is vastly different, in part thanks to some of the lessons I learned.
HE SAYS:
I remember feeling annoyed when I realised our marriage had become another seven-year itch statistic, having kidded myself I wasn’t the kind of man to allow a relationship to fail.
For years I couldn’t fathom where we went wrong. Now, I can see our marriage foundered because we didn’t have dreams or aspirations; we just existed. As a couple, you need to move forward together.
One of the best evenings we ever had was that seventh wedding anniversary dinner. We walked home hand in hand and I thought: ‘I love this person, why isn’t it working?’ But I knew we’d had a good time that night because we were ourselves, not husband and wife, Mum and Dad. If only we could have bottled that.
I met Liz in 2007, and I was very conscious of the ‘itch’ when we reached our seventh year together. Ironically, we were facing similar issues to those Bev and I had.
By then we had two very small children, our social lives and disposable income had evaporated, and there was never time to go out and have fun.
Unlike with Bev, Liz and I talked through our issues.
Perhaps the seven-year itch is less about falling out of love with your partner and more about forgetting that for a marriage to last it needs direction.