Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.Any darkening of the mind, disturbance therein, instigation to the lowest or earthly things; together with every disquietude and agitation, or temptation, which moves to distrust concerning salvation, and expels hope and charity; whence the soul feels that she is saddened, grows lukewarm, becomes torpid, and almost despairs of the mercy of God.This is how Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order of priests, described “spiritual desolation” in 1548. He was referring to the feeling of emptiness that people tend to feel after the initial euphoria of a religious conversion. After the flush of new faith, which he calls “consolation,” life’s troubles return, people feel they have made a mistake, and they may fall away.This desolation is not merely a religious phenomenon. It describes much of our experience when something new and beautiful sparks joy and enthusiasm but later becomes tedious and tiresome. Marriages, for example, notoriously suffer from the so-called seven-year itch, when passion gives way to boredom and conflict. Similarly, new jobs are exciting and interesting for a while but then become a grind or an oppression.[Listen: How to live when you’re in pain]One might easily conclude that the natural and appropriate course of action is to make a change at the point of desolation—to dissolve the relationship; quit the job; look for consolation again in novelty. But this may very well not be correct. One of the secrets to long-term well-being is to understand spiritual desolation not as a block to your well-being but as a pathway that promises personal growth. If you know how to use desolation to get to the other side, an even sweeter consolation awaits.Ignatius described the initial, consolatory phase of faith as an “easy and light thing.” And so it is with most big life changes when they are both voluntary and new. Novelty per se stimulates attention, which is why marketing scholars have found that simply adding the word new to an advertisement enhances consumer interest (which is a basic positive emotion) in the product offered. In particular, people who score high in the personality trait of openness to experience find new life circumstances pleasurable.We see this novelty effect very clearly in the research on marriages. In one 2010 study of 464 newlywed spouses, both husbands and wives enjoyed their highest marital satisfaction in the first four months after their wedding. This is not to say that divorce becomes a danger immediately after that honeymoon period; the risk of separation remains low for the first couple of years. But the incidence rises over time and peaks at about the five-year point, according to a 2014 study from Finland in the journal Demography. The data, in other words, suggest that this spike in marital desolation—characterized by boredom, decreased intimacy, and increased conflict—might more accurately be called a “five-year itch.”Job satisfaction follows a similar cycle, although it moves more quickly. According to 2009 research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, people who change jobs and are committed to making a new job work (they fulfill their duties conscientiously and are socially integrated) register an increase in job satisfaction for the first three months. At this point, however, the consolation begins to fade and that satisfaction declines for the rest of the year, reaching a nadir at the end of the first year on the new job. This is when, in my experience, many people say they feel they made a mistake in changing jobs. Let’s call that the “one-year itch.”Not all marriages fail after five years; neither does everyone quit their job after a year. Indeed, the latest longitudinal data (from couples married between 2010 and 2012) show that about 82 percent stay married for at least 10 years, and divorce risk continues declining after year five, all the way until one spouse dies. By the same token, nearly half of people have been in the same job for four years—and about one-quarter of workers stay in their gig for 10 years or more. This phenomenon of persistence has led researchers to ask how spouses or employees who stay the course succeed in getting over the hump of desolation and (presumably) finding renewed consolation in their marriage or job.For the secret to that, we turn once again to Ignatius and what he had to say about keeping faith during the dark nights of the soul: “Learn not only to resist the adversary, but also to vanquish him.” That is, see desolation as a challenge to develop the skill of persisting in faith, rather than a reason to mourn the loss of a feeling you once had. So it is in other parts of life. What marriages and careers that last have in common is not that their participants somehow never encounter desolation but that they use the happiness trough as an opportunity to learn and grow.In marriage, the couples who make it through the spell of despondency are those who grow from competition to collaboration. The early years of marriage generally involve a clash of individual wills. Researchers writing in the journal Family Relations showed that the spouses who get past the hump and are happiest in later years have each learned to mold their will to the other’s. These spouses see an increasing equality of decision making and household responsibilities; in couples who have religious faith, this convergence also manifests as a greater degree of shared observance over time and the mutual conviction that marriage should last until death. These skills and beliefs, forged through resolving conflict, cement the couple into a lifelong unit.Similarly, the happiest workers are those who endure by learning and applying positive coping strategies in the face of the problems that characterize job desolation. One 2023 study of newly graduated nurses found that those who wound up with higher job satisfaction were not the ones who avoided workplace conflicts but those who acquired strength by facing challenges “directly and rationally.” Evading difficulties, or simply withdrawing, proved to be a nonlearning strategy that did not provide the reward of job satisfaction.In most areas of life, especially those that involve maintaining relationships, periods of desolation will be part of the normal course of events. Taking our cue from Ignatius, social scientists like me might suggest three ways to turn the tough times into vital learning opportunities.1. Stick to your knitting.A time comes in the spiritual life, Ignatius asserts, when desolation cannot be denied or avoided. At such a moment, the right first move is to do nothing: “One must not deliberate on anything, or make any change concerning one’s purpose of mind, or state of life, but persevere in those things which had been settled before, suppose, during the preceding day or hour of consolation.” In other words, you should not fall prey to rash emotion (which he calls an “evil spirit”), and let it rule an imprudent decision to quit. Instead, you should recognize desolation as a normal feature of any relationship, with a person or an institution (such as an employer). Look at this difficult time the way you would regard root-canal work: with calm resignation and a confidence that, with the necessary dentistry, better times lie ahead.[Arthur C. Brooks: Breakups always hurt, but you can shorten the suffering]2. Get on the same side of the table.For the religious believer, Ignatius’s approach to desolation is to see it not as the individual and God on opposite sides of a problem but you with God, facing your struggle and getting through it together. This conception offers the right approach in marriage too. A clash of wills is a mutual problem best solved collaboratively, not thrashed out competitively. Indeed, that is exactly what the research says delivers the skills for couples who make it to the post-itch consolation of a successful and happy marriage. This approach can be harder to implement at work, but is not impossible. I once met an executive who was heading off to a brutal bout of legal mediation with a competitor. He was remarkably upbeat about it, and when I asked why, he said, “Today, a nasty fight will end because we will both agree on a settlement.”3. Do the work.Patience is important in getting past desolation, which can last quite a while in faith, love, and work. But patience alone isn’t enough. Desolation can’t just be waited out. That is the recipe for becoming spiritually dead—a mere roommate with your spouse or a checked-out shell of an employee with your Zoom camera always switched off. Ignatius suggests the serious program of piety and prayer laid out in his famous Spiritual Exercises, a guide still used by millions to this day. Marriages in a state of desolation need a similar intervention, sometimes from counseling, just as a career on the rocks can benefit from coaching.Of course, there are times when desolation can’t be fixed, and the best solution is dissolution. I won’t speak to the theological case, but this can certainly be true in marriages, especially when abuse or abandonment has occurred. And when it comes to work, a change from time to time can be a very good and healthy thing.In these instances, we might extend Ignatius’s wisdom to learn and grow not just from desolation but from the dissolution itself. When a relationship has to end, either unhappily or amicably, valuable information is at hand—including the potential to learn from your own mistakes. Manage that, and your new consolations will be all the sweeter and deeper.