The short-term and long-term irreversible behaviors of suspensions of rigid particles in oscillatory shear flow are studied by measuring the evolution of complex viscosity in time and applying of nonlinear analysis of the responded strain signal under the controlled-stress mode, and complemented by optical measurements on the particle motion. The short-term transition time for the system to reach a quasisteady state is an approximately bell-shaped function of the amplitude of the strain response, thus showing a critical strain amplitude accounting for the peak transition time. The short-term behavior is caused by the particle self-organization due to collisions between particles. At longer time scales, the complex viscosity of the suspension increases when probed by forces that elicit small strain amplitudes and decreases when stresses that result in large strain amplitudes are applied. It is proposed that the long-term behavior for stresses eliciting small strain amplitude is induced by the shear-induced diffusion of particles which self-organize into a crystal-like microstructure that can be easily annulled in oscillatory flow with large strain amplitude, while for stresses causing large strain amplitude the dominant microstructure is formed immediately via the oscillation. (C) 2013 The Society of Rheology.