Boredom: the three year itch

Someone sent me a link to a blog that is apparently written by a sociopath. I haven't read anything else but this post about sociopath's boredom, but I thought it addressed some interesting issues:

I’m suffering from a very specific sociopathic malady just at the moment: boredom. You may think that doesn’t sound so bad, but to a sociopath it’s a huge problem, something we can’t shake off or ignore or alleviate except by extreme measures.

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So divorce or a breakup followed by serial dating and a new seduction; being promoted or headhunted OR fired – all these provide excitement, chaos to be skillfully negotiated, new people to be charmed and controlled and moulded. You’ll notice that the negative experiences carry the same value as the positive. It shouldn’t make sense, but to us it does. Change is good, and because of our tendency to grandiosity we think we’re equal to anything. We can do anything, deal with anything, overcome anything. We’re not afraid. Sadly when we charge off for our shiny new adventure we can forget that not everybody finds it quite so wonderful, and that it impacts on others in ways we hadn’t considered or felt responsible for.

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The interesting thing I’ve found, in discussing with other people like me, is that for all of us it happens on a regular cycle. The length of the cycle varies from one to another, but for me it appears roughly every three years. It hasn’t been obvious up until now because with that timescale, naturally-occurring events in my life have often provided change at just the right time. Job changes, pregnancy, college etc all synchronised with my cycle and I haven’t often found myself feeling this way. I’ve also been lucky that the changes I’ve made have fit with the needs of my partner and family, and we’ve never found ourselves materially or emotionally worse off.

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The interesting thing I’ve found, in discussing with other people like me, is that for all of us it happens on a regular cycle. The length of the cycle varies from one to another, but for me it appears roughly every three years. It hasn’t been obvious up until now because with that timescale, naturally-occurring events in my life have often provided change at just the right time. Job changes, pregnancy, college etc all synchronised with my cycle and I haven’t often found myself feeling this way. I’ve also been lucky that the changes I’ve made have fit with the needs of my partner and family, and we’ve never found ourselves materially or emotionally worse off.