In early stages of M-M certain outward signs show up and help identify the causes of the irrational feelings and behaviour of what appears to be, for many men, a curious decline in health. Of course many problems have their roots in diagnosable physical or mental conditions but for a man who until his early forties has been evidently healthy, with no signs of emotional instability, suffering from more than two of these obvious signs then it all adds up to the male-menopause.
No one incident or event triggers off the crisis. For some men the symptoms build up gradually over a period of months, maybe a year, while for others it is an overnight revelation. Either way, however, it is an irrational crisis that requires careful handling if people are not to be hurt or lives needlessly upset.
The crisis comes at a moment of transition, a time when a man still sees himself as young and has failed to notice that middle age beckons. He knows middle age is around the corner but his corner is some way off. One survivor says, on looking back, that he realizes now M-M was for him like being dragged across a mediaeval drawbridge into an enemy fortress called Middle Age. The problem was whether to capitulate and enter gracefully into the unknown or to resist and fight every inch of the way. (He fought.)
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