Researchers have identified a new tendency towards a crisis in relationships in the third year of marriage. But readers of this blog have known this for months. We describe it as the second phase of the Resigned Compliance stage of Mirage Man Syndrome known as Disillusionment.
In the Disillusionment phase, the mirage man becomes exasperated with his mate as the potency of the physical aspect of the relationship wanes. The clashing of different temperaments and lack of common interests and goals now takes center stage. This is the unavoidable result of both the compliant and misogynist mirage man's tactic of keeping his true feelings to himself to establish the romance. One day those funny little quirks of hers that were so endearing during the early days of passion become annoying character defects that grate at the mirage man like finger nails on a chalk board. The once-passionate relationship begins a long, slow slide towards estrangement.
In this phase the process of falling out of love occurs. Florida State University Psychology Professor Dan Boroto attributes the death of love as a direct result of undisclosed communication. Withholding information worked well for the mirage man during the artificial intimacy and approval seeking stages. But the same deceptive technique that was used to perfection to win the romance is now the agent of destruction of the marriage or cohabitation.
The wife or lover experiences a slow, steady disillusionment about her Prince Charming in this second phase of Resigned Compliance. Her once-affectionate swain is now so distant. The constant stream of flowers and love letters reduces to an irregular trickle and then finally dries up completely. Her eyes may be as blue as ever, but she doesn't hear him talk rapturously about them any more. They are still doing most of the things she envisioned most couples do, but something is amiss. The honeymoon is fading and he is resistant when she naturally tries to move the union into greater emotional intimacy. Like all mirage men, he feels he must hide his real self to perpetuate the romance born of dishonesty.
Over the long haul this ends up destroying the marriage or cohabitation. Sonya Rhodes, a marriage and family psychotherapist and author of "Second Honeymoon:A Pioneering Guide to Reviving the Midlife Crisis", observed the damaging effect a poor relationship has on the sexual aspect of marriage. Through her years of clinical therapy, she has observed that women tend to see sex as a natural result of a healthy relationship, while men consider sexual relations unconnected to the interpersonal aspect of the union. When a marriage is ailing, the sexual relations tend to be withheld by the woman, while a married man "wants to have sex even when the relationship is under stress." Thus the mirage man will find his moments of physical intimacy declining with his partner's declining opinion of the emotional intimacy of the union. That is when mirage men will begin contemplating the "itch" to seek sexual relations outside the marriage or cohabitation.
