The Four Year Itch

Or a case of insomnia and wanderlust

Hello friends,

I am trying something different this week with the newsletter and format and am sharing a longer-form essay that I wrote while having trouble sleeping. It relates very much to my last post as it was brought about by a desire to explore—mostly thanks to Candice Renoir and the French seaside (see previous post to learn more about that). I would love to hear if this resonates with you. As always, thank you for reading.

—Melanie

The Four-Year Itch

It’s called the four-year itch. 

You might think I mean seven-year itch, but I didn’t make a mistake.

The seven-year itch is a movie starring Marylin Monroe loosely based on the conceit that when a couple is married for seven years, there is a psychological trickery that happens, and one--or both--of the partners need to stray. Just Google “seven-year itch” and you have a rash of articles from dubious web medical sources all claiming to support or refute this theory that boredom causes infidelity around year seven of a marriage or long-term relationship. 

I, for one, cannot prove or disprove this theory as I have a) never been witness to relationships of those I know falling apart at the seven-year mark or b) never been in a relationship long enough to test the theory myself. 

In fact, any of my relationships that made it out of the opening gates and onto the track fell apart around the seven-month mark. The seven-month itch doesn’t sound as troublesome. 

While I may not know much about the seven-year itch, I do know quite a thing or two about the four-year itch. In fact, I consider myself one of the foremost experts on the topic. 

The four-year itch is when the subject begins to get restless with their life circumstances after four years. Sometimes it’s before four years, leading up to the fourth anniversary. So maybe a 3.5-year itch is more accurate, but that has too many syllables to be catchy. 

The exact cause of the four-year itch is unknown, but experts have based their hypotheses on the stage of life we call “high school” and then it is often repeated by “college”, in which the subject has spent four years at one place before getting catapulted into the next stage of life. This cycle is often marked by a celebration. 

For many, this four-year cycle ends. Time is no longer demarcated by the opening and closing of an academic year planner. The cycle is broken, and there is no clear end date that tells the subject when to move on to the next endeavor. Left to their own choices, subjects embark on cycles of six months, a year, six years, ten years, eternity even, for some. No arbitrary rankings to tell them what lap they’re on. No grades to let them know how well they’re done. These subjects have taken on “adulthood”, complete with jobs, paychecks, and the ever-present specter of taxes. Even those who opt into shorter cycles often do so decisively, be it for a title, a raise, or an adventure.   

But the four-year itchers haven’t yet been welcomed into the ranks of their compatriots. 

Those with the four-year itch embark on a new life path every 3-4 years, claiming to those around them that this new location, job, personality, this is the one for them. 

And it really seems like it is for that first year. That first year is the honeymoon phase--or freshmen year if we’re sticking with the school analogy. Everything is new and exciting. New people, new places, new restaurants, new entertainment. New successes, new failures. The energy that infuses this cycle is infectious, intoxicating. It’s so convincing that the subject is convinced that this cycle holds the answer. 

The second year continues much like the first, except deeper and more profound. Relationships get stronger, ambitions get more pronounced, driving routes become routine. In this second year, the subject may become a “regular” at a variety of places. They may pick up new hobbies, join new organizations, and become embedded in a community. They have found their place. 

Then, the third year creeps up on them. This is the hardest year because, if we’re following the original blueprint, we know the end is coming up next and the biggest tests lie ahead. A four-year itcher begins to get cold feet. Maybe the newness has worn off. Maybe relationships have changed or evolved and they feel at sea--untethered to a community. Maybe they have become comfortable, and others have become comfortable around them, so the affirmations (or grades, if you will) are tacit, so they question the foundations. They are still enjoying where they are, but they’re restless, as if the world as they know it is shifting under their feet. 

It’s here that the four-year itcher faces a crossroads, and this is what distinguishes this cohort from the rest of their post-graduate peers. Those with a four-year itch are preparing for constant graduation, and thus, they don’t let themselves get tied down to anything for long. Because they anticipated that, at the end of the four years, they will be kicked out and forced to start over again. 

These subjects have built a protection protocol to deal with this eviction. They drop activities they once deemed vital, they pull away from the community they once held dear; they start researching the next location, the next challenge, the next opportunity. In fact, the worst thing for a four-year itch subject is to let the end sneak up on them and have them be unprepared. No, they have to get ahead of the change before the rug is pulled out from under them and they are forced to begin again. Again. 

The itch comes on suddenly, and it always takes the subject by surprise. Because before the itch starts, they can never imagine feeling the itch again. Everything is going too well. But, out of nowhere, the itch starts, and once it starts, it can be a challenge to soothe. 

When the four-year itch is triumphant, the winds have changed, as in Mary Poppins, and it’s time for the subject to go. Sometimes, this is just what the subject needs--a fresh start, and a new challenge. Though it may not appear like the right path at first because this cohort notoriously doesn’t trust their decision-making, and they have put themselves in the number one situation they fear--starting over again, alone. 

Of course, that’s not to say acting on the four-year itch is a foregone conclusion. The itch can be abated if the subject finds what it is they’re looking for--often it’s belonging, a sense of safety, and a clear goal. Those who are afflicted with a four-year itch have the comorbidity of “grass is always greener” syndrome, and as they get older, this is easier to spot as an impetus behind the itch, along with fear of abandonment or irrelevance. 

Once the subject realizes the root cause of the four-year itch, they can take a step back and examine its validity. While in some cases, there may truly be a change of the winds, many times the four-year itch is driven by fear of missing an experience, feeling like they are lacking the answer to life that all of those who have broken free from the four-year cycle have figured out. So they become stuck in an ambivalence that keeps them on the run, leading to dreams that go unfulfilled because dreams aren’t spoken in the first place. 

The trick is, of course, that in order for the itch to go away, the subject has to recognize that that statement is a fallacy. No one, not even those who have chosen the straight-line path, has the answer to life and has escaped the consistency of change. As it just so happens, the unknown is the only constant, and all cohorts have adapted to their own management of it. 

The challenge for those with the four-year itch is letting go of the adherence to the timeline for this change. There is likely another move, another job, lost relationships, gained relationships--this is the world we live in, and once a four-year itcher begins to accept this their world opens up a bit more. They no longer are searching for what’s next because they have found a way to recognize there’s always something new in the present. They don’t fear making a decision because they know nothing is irreversible. They don’t fear starting again when the time is right because they know the connections they have made along the way will be there for them—no matter the location. 

It’s only then that someone with a four-year itch realizes the secret of adulthood--no one gets the answers after graduation, and everyone is along for the ride. And once they recognize that, the world is their oyster.