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The disintegration of a marriage occurs so gradually, so incrementally, so naturally, that most spouses do not recognize the calamity for several months or years, and then only after it has reached very difficult proportions. Actually, however, most marriages begin to fall apart during the honeymoon.

The moment the spouses say "1 do," the relationship becomes compulsory instead of voluntary. Almost everything within the newly formed joint system is viewed within a perspective different from that of the happy courting days. The change is profound. During the wooing, both people constantly attempt to be as attractive as possible; each tries to exhibit only those parts of himself which will please and capture the other. For example, during courtship, a man who is bored by opera may get tickets for an opening night, put on uncomfortable clothes, and spend more money than he can afford for the grand occasion, if that's what his woman wants.

Women behave in a similar manner. For example, a city woman who dislikes walking even three blocks to the subway and who enjoys staying up half the night and sleeping the next morning, may when "in love" get up before sunrise and go fishing with her young man-even though the sight of a Hopping fish may disgust her and the pitching boat may make her seasick. Romantic love and the desire to "capture" the other stimulate this type of behavior.

During the courting period, the male (in our culture) usually assumes the initiative. He woos the female. The female generally encourages this by playing the traditionally feminine role-that of joyfully accepting the male's aggression.

But after the marriage the average husband has to get about his chore of making a living. His romantic aggressiveness diminishes. Certain of his behavioral and material contributions to the woman's well-being are discontinued. Instead, the husband now believes his wife has an added responsibility-that of "taking care" of him; he tacitly assumes that she will henceforth be a mother to him as well as a mistress and a wife.

In the romantic passion of the courting period, the female had assumed (or at least had hoped) that the male's ardent wooing would continue forever. But it does not, and so the wife usually begins to ask for the courtship courtesies the male once gave her voluntarily. She indicates that for him not to give them is a breach of contract. He resents this, regarding her demands as showing a lack of consideration and therefore themselves constituting a breach of the courtship contract. He gradually finds excuses for decreasing his wooing activities even further, sometimes substituting indifference or stubbornness. The wife retaliates by withdrawing some of the tenderness and loving niceties she had provided during their premarital days.

As the novelty of the relationship begins to wear off, the effort to change one's idiosyncrasies in order to be accommodating becomes more difficult. The husband says he is too fatigued to go to the opera; and the wife feels ill when it's time to get up early to go fishing. In the course of day-to-day living, the spouses cease being actors trying hard to please an audience of one; and the habits and tastes acquired during a lifetime begin to show and to clash. The situation is further complicated by the development of new needs, new patterns of behavior, and resistance to change, provoked through the new relationship itself. Once married, people often are surprised by themselves and will say, "But I wasn't like this before we married, so it must be you who make me like this." Perhaps the wife can't stand the husband's habit of sleeping in his underclothes and of bathing only in the morning. He may feel insulted when she comes to dinner with rollers in her hair. The husband may get annoyed when his wife leaves the kitchen a mess at night, and she loses her temper when he refuses to cut the lawn.

Their differences seem numberless. The wife rolls the toothpaste tube up from the bottom; the husband squeezes it in the middle. He hates hairs in the sink; she neglects to wash out the basin after she has combed her hair. She learns that he tells the same stories over and over, which becomes a bore; he finds that she laughs at other men's jokes more than she does at his. And so the clashes occur repeatedly through the variety of behavior patterns which occur daily.

Starting with the honeymoon, sex also is usually a disappointment, if not a complete failure, or even a tragedy, as we saw in Chapter 13; so in this respect too, marriage contrasts sharply with the courtship period.

Slowly, the battles begin. If the wife has a headache just when her husband feels especially eager for sex, he may well conclude, "She's using sex as a weapon to get her own way. That's just like a woman!" If the husband loses his temper over the wife's behavior, she may think, "He's too damned domineering. What does he think I am his slave?" Whatever the areas of difference, they are almost certain to be enlarged by the advice and comments of friends and relatives who enjoy vicarious participation in the battle of the sexes.

Interviews with normogenic (average) families make it clear that the disintegrating process in a marriage is usually triggered not by consciously malevolent behavior, but by what the spouses neglect to say and do. The first steps toward destruction result mostly from omissions, failures to bring the spouse's untested expectations into conformity with reality. It is important, then, that spouses recognize the conduct and transactions whose absence may be sabotaging their marriage.

Let us consider the two destructive omissions which occur most frequently.

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