Disillusionment? ………. Disappointed?...............

No one tells us about them in understanding love and marriage. This Stage is where your marriage collapses and for too many relationships this is the beginning of the end.

This is a period where things begin to feel bad. It can occur slowly or can feel like a switch is flipped and everything goes wrong. Little things begin to bother you.

You feel less loved and cared for.

You feel trapped and want to escape.

You become more irritable and angry or hurt and withdrawn.

You may stay busy at work or with the family, but the dissatisfactions mount.

You wonder where the person we once loved has gone.

You long for the love you once had, but you don’t know where it went or how to get it back.

One or the other partner wants out or sometimes people go on “existing together,” but without really feeling intimate. This is a time you often get sick in body, mind, and soul.

In your marriage, both begin having problems with your hearts (heartache?) and are diagnosed with atrial fibrillation.

Guys begin having serious problems with erections. To be realistic, there are times when it is miserable, and you start thinking about leaving the relationship.

But don’t give up, you keep going. There’s an old adage, “When you’re going through hell, don’t stop.” This seems to be true of this stage of life.

The positive side of this stage is that the heat burns away a lot of your illusions about yourselves and your partner.

You have an opportunity to become more loving and appreciate the person you are with, not the projections we had placed on them as your “ideal mate.”

You may have now been together over ten years. You’ve moved into the next stages of love and feel blessed to have learned the skills for negotiating the stage of disillusionment and can truly enjoy the later stages of love.

You start a new job and love everything about it – your terrific boss, your fabulous co-workers and your first assignment. Even your little cubicle is in the perfect location, with a bit of sunlight from a nearby window and near all of the right people. And then, sometimes all of a sudden, sometimes just bit-by-bit, you start to feel less excited. Maybe you even start to dread going to work. 

You meet a special person – a boyfriend or girlfriend, or even a new friend or roommate. You love being with them and can imagine spending the rest of your life together. Everything about them and with them seems…well, special.

 And then, you start to notice that they don’t do everything exactly the way you wish they would. Maybe your partner leaves the dishes in the sink one time too many; or you realize that your new love tends to wear the same shirt too many days in a row. Or maybe he doesn’t listen to you, or she talks too much… how did you never notice that before?

You put a deposit on a rental or a down payment on a purchase – an apartment, a house, a car – that you’ve been dreaming of forever. You are so excited!

And then, somehow, you start to notice all of the downside. The apartment is in a noisy neighbourhood. The house doesn’t have a proper entryway. The car is smaller than you thought.

You feel let down. And then you start to wonder:

How did you miss these flaws in the first place?

How did this happen?

And what do you do now?

So let’s talk about that letdown.

What is it?

Why does it happen?

Does the letdown have to take away all of your good feelings?

First of all, it’s important to know that idealization and disillusionment are normal.

A sense of everything being special is how we get ourselves into new situations. It’s also a reaction to the flow of natural chemicals, like endorphins, through our bodies that occurs when we get excited about something.

The “high” feeling colours our view of what we see, makes things look maybe better than they would look otherwise, and by doing so, gets us to take those early steps towards development.

And then reality steps in.

Eventually, the high wears off, the endorphins and other “feel good” chemicals stop surging through our bodies, and we start to look at things more realistically. As the good feelings dissipate, you start to feel a physical letdown as well as a psychological one. “Meh” replaces “Wow!”

Performers are so familiar with this feeling that they’ve given it a name: “post-performance depression.”

First, during a performance, there’s the excitement of preparing, working hard, enjoying the audience reaction, and being part of a close-knit group of colleagues working together towards the same goal.

There’s a physiological part to all of this hard work, too. The body is releasing not only stress hormones, but also neurotransmitters and endorphins that are related to an improved mood and state of mind.

And then it’s over and the excitement, hard work, and even the moments of frustration and depletion are done. The let-down is both psychological and physical.

The body stops producing all of those delicious chemicals that bathe our brains in good feelings. Dancers, singers, actors, writers all suffer from the loss of the intensity – even of something that was clearly never perfect!  

So how do you cope with this shift in your own life?

It’s an important question, because how we manage this change in your feelings can make the difference between success and failure, happiness and misery, and a good life and a disenchanted one. 

Disclaimer: The information on this POST is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional advice. The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this article is for general information purposes / educational purposes only, and to ensue discussion or debate. 

Thank you …Here are important ideas to keep in mind when you feel that letdown:

First, it’s normal.

Second, it’s not your fault.

Third, it’s not the other person’s fault.

And fourth, the feelings will pass.

But you probably do have to go through the feelings before you can get to the other side. The question is,

What can you do to make the feelings more tolerable?

What can you do to help them pass? 

Want to add word or two?

It is completely normal to start on any new ventures with high hopes, high expectations and a sense of pleasure about what we have already seen. If we didn’t feel that way, we wouldn’t start anything new. Of course some of us, disillusioned one too many times, squash those feelings before they take flight. These are folks who look at any new venture and find all of the faults. And if this describes you, you may actually (although sometimes unconsciously) be trying to prepare for the eventual letdown that is bound to come.

Your comment ….?

Idealization and disillusionment are both normal parts of human experience.

Small, manageable disappointments starting early in childhood help us learn to be more realistic. Each time we feel let down by your loved ones or by your own failures, you build the muscles you need to cope with the inevitable disappointments that will come throughout life. 

The key word here is “manageable.” Too much or too little disappointment in childhood makes it hard for us to develop a more realistic view of ourselves, and we are susceptible to feeling let down over and over again as we mature. Psychoanalyst, may call it “optimal disillusionment” – that is, enough to hurt, but not so much that we are overwhelmed – we gradually develop a mature, relatively accurate view of ourselves and of others.  

As we get older, even the healthiest person can have unrealistic expectations. You may have gotten so excited about your new job that you can’t see any of the flaws –