Your memories are roses with thorns that prick.
The fragrance fades and the trauma recedes.
What is the optimal time period that you should be in a relationship with an entity (someone or an organisation) before it goes sour ? 3-4 years is my guesstimate. After that your memories will be fond and you don't develop enough familiarity to breed contempt. Keep in mind that the other entity also feels the same about you in many ways. The following pattern, I believe is true not just between 2 human beings of opposite genders who are engaged in occasional coitus but between also between 2 groups of 1 or more Humans engaged in any activity of any nature over a contiguous period of time.
~~~The Courtship ~~~
Year 0 : You meet at a common friend's place(referral), at a website or by accident at a public gathering. You like each other enough to commit to a tentative relationship and find yourself willing to do (or able to do) whatever it takes to make it work.
~~~The Newly Married Couple Discover Each Other ~~~
Year 1 : You are finding your feet and in your perspective benefiting more than your partner
~~~In Love and Conceiving Great Things ~~~
Year 2 : You have found your feet and you are making confident strides.
~~~The End of the Beginning ~~~
Year 3 : You are in a great partnership and mutually benefiting each other. There is great synergy. If only things could be like this forever.
~~~The Beginning of the End~~~
Year 4 : Your partner is benefiting more now and you don't mind as much because you would like to repay him for year 1 and some of year 2. Flirting with others (like attending job interviews) and cheating (like promoting less deserving candidates over you to prevent them from leaving) start to commence as you don't feel as obligated as you did in the beginning. Boredom starts to set in.
~~~ And it Starts to get Stressful ~~~
Year 5 : You think you have paid your dues and would like to see more from your partner but she doesn't seem all that keen to contribute more to the effort and seems reluctant to give you your due. You stay patient and don't really mind as after all it's just a matter of time before things are rectified. Occasionally you lose your cool and you are pacified with something temporary.
~~~Familiarity has bred contempt~~~
Year 6 : The pacification tricks don't work anymore. Your partner doesn't bother to employ them anymore either. You both have heated arguments and discussions which get more and more strained each day. You have put in more than 5 years into this relationship and you resent being taken for granted. You have had it and will not compromise. You are giving him one last chance. You know each other so well that your psychological and emotional tricks of years past don't work anymore on each other.
~~~We Have Ignition~~~
Year 7 : You've had it. "Bye Bye" or "I (literally and otherwise) don't give a fuck anymore". One or both of you openly state that you are looking for a change or stay under the radar to minimize information leak to your antagonist which may enable/prompt her/him to employ loss mitigation or counter strategic measures. You leave when it is optimal/profitable or unbearable.
~~~Steady State Conditions~~~
Year 8+: If the Big Bang did not make any change to your Universe then you prolly ran out of fissionable material and have resigned yourself to a state of steady decay accepting significant half-life events as wisely as a SaGe on a mountain top. Life flows by you and you serenely accept what you see in a state of Zen !
