The 10 Year Itch

[AlsoKnownAs17]

I keep having conversations with people who either say directly or hint at the fact that they're marriage is not exactly on good form. These are some of the conversations I've had in the last few months:

• I just don't desire OH any more.
• We've been in seperate bedrooms for a year.
• OH said I'm boring and has left me for someone at work.
• We argue all the time.
• Marriage hasn't turned out to be what I expected.
• If it wasn't for the kids we might not be together.
• Is everyone at your kid's school getting divorced? They are at ours.

The oobvious thing that all these couples have in common is that they've been married for about 10yrs and have kids.

Have I just surrounded myself with dysfunctional people?
Am I somehow infecting all my friends with Marriageitis?
Or is this normal?

Same here....
Many friends in their 40s with kids now a little more independent - in primary/secondary school - and women are drowning in everyday drudgery....
Looking at husbands and wondering if this is it.

Some having affairs, some divorcing.
I am guessing it’s just life and consequence of women (and people in general) not willing to just live and settle. Of wanting more.

Mostly normal. The only reason we don't have the same itch with friends is because we don't leave 24/7 with them and we don't have to see them if we don't want to.

@JosUK
Do you think this is a gender issue or a gender-role issue?
When I was at school I remember it as being the husbands that took up with their secretaries, but amongst the conversations above there are full time dads, and full time working mums: does this say something about the pressures and deprivation of being the primary parent?
Or are we just more honest about women's power, respons1ibility and needs when it comes to infidelity these days?

I don’t know.
It may be the role - women (working or not) do end up carrying more of the more mundane part of child rearing and after a decade of that it gets to people....

But - it may be my sample - I am female, so more aware of the women’s side. My friends and I talk more frankly and I know about their struggles and ways of dealing with them. While their husbands - maybe they chat to their male friend, or, more likely - no one...

Nothing to do with gender..if you're going to cheat you're going to cheat. All people have the capability to be dishonest and wander. I was married for over 10yrs...never again. My ExW cheated and I never thought she'd be the type. I seriously believe that marriage is a passion killer, every long term married couple I know is either miserable or marking time (for the kids). I just don'think there's any value to it anymore.

I think that long term relationships are hard. You've been with that person for so long and sometimes they don't turn out how you thought. Sometimes, jobs take over because of demands from management and it means there's not enough time for you as a couple, or kids not going to bed means that you don't get time in the evening. Yet, if two people want to make it work, they will. Sometimes i think people are quite shallow and think a relationship is about looks and sex and why I think most don't last nowadays, and that's why people cheat because they can't be satisfied with what they have.

In my group of friends there has only been once divorce but there's only 3 couples who have been married for 10 years or more (including me and DH) and we are all still happy and going strong.

This is defo the case in our group of friends, and includes couples from various bits of it (ie, some within our immediate circle and some other friends of ours who live elsewhere...) all of us have been married over 10 years, together in most cases much longer (since uni in most cases), both aged 40 or thereabouts, all have a couple of kids, and nearly all of us having some sort of relationship difficulties. A couple of years ago we all seemed happy as you like. It's odd.