The danger of the seven-year-plus mark is that you are intimately acquainted with the "Maintenance" of your relationship. You know the grit, the compromise, and the hard days. When you compare your Internal Reality to someone else’s External Edit, you are looking through a distorted lens.

Habituation is the status quo of the soul. It’s the habit of "Normal." When your life becomes a predictable loop, your brain goes into power-save mode. It stops recording the details.

To get that "New Car Smell" back, you don't need a new car. You need a Pattern Interrupt. You need to artificially disrupt your vantage point so your brain is forced to "re-load" your reality in high definition.