Bored in love life? Seven-year itch is for real

Have you ever felt that your long relationship has no spark left and happiness has nose-dived considerably in your love life? Blame it on the famous seven-year itch phenomenon.

According to researchers, the seven-year itch is a psychological term that suggests that happiness in a relationship declines after around seven years of marriage.

In a study of women's love lives over a period of seven years, those whose relationship lasted the duration experienced the greatest loss of sexual desire.

The study, published in the journal Psychological Medicine, found that women who were in the same relationship at the end of the time period as at the beginning were found to have a level of sexual desire that was 53 per cent lower than it was when asked seven years previously.

"But those who were in a different relationship after seven years or were single had a higher libido," found the researchers who surveyed some women in 2006 and returned to the same sample in 2013.

"The most pronounced observation for sexual desire was that women who were in the same relationship throughout the observation period had the greatest decrease in sexual desire," lead author Annika Gunst from University of Turku in Finland was quoted as saying in a Daily Mail report.