The stage was set for a marital crisis. All of the ingredients were there. Jim was annoyed. He had finally become a responsible adult and was loving his role, only to find that Dora resented his work and his time away from home. She felt lousy about herself and about the predicament that she and Jim had put her in. Dora recalls that she “was agitated about everything,” Jim asked her if she wanted a divorce. This is the critical point. Do they want to work toward a redesign of their relationship, or do they want to give up and turn to independent paths? Dora answered Jim by saying “no.” She backed this up by deciding to return to school after her pelvis healed in order to mend her self-concept:
Jim paid for me to go back to school and earn my degree. He has provided everything we have ever had, physically. He bought us this house, which brought us to this [much safer] town. I didn’t want to move here, but he got a good deal. This put us in a major transition in our lives.
Thus, they were able to turn around Dora’s envy, by coupling Jim’s enjoyment in becoming a reliable breadwinner with Dora’s interest in improving her self-image through further education. Rather than envying Jim’s success, Dora was able to build on it by allowing Jim to pay for her education. In addition, rather than blaming Jim for their move to a new community, Dora went along with the move and found some real benefits in moving to a much smaller town. Rather than complaining about the isolation, Dora saw it as an opportunity to come closer together as a family: “this house isolated us. We began to clean up. We also stopped fighting as much.” Jim noted that: “we moved away from the party crowd. We left the wild times, the bands, the drugs and alcohol.” In getting away from the party life, according to Dora, the two of them “didn’t have to try as hard any more to grow up. It solidified our growing up.”
This process of remarriage was highly visible in part because they worked out their new relationship in the midst of complex family dynamics. Dora’s family is upper middle class, WASPish and very traditional. They were able to accept Jim because he is a “nice guy” and hard-working. On the other hand, Jim’s family is more “ethnic having come from another country.” Jim has ten brothers and sisters, and his sisters especially took a dislike to Dora: “they would wait until Jim was out of the room and then they would attack me. I left the house in tears, many times.” Jim: “I kept asking you to stay away from them.” Dora: “I know, but I guess, coming from my background, I thought we should do ‘the family thing’ on holidays and such, but then they would isolate me and then rip me to shreds. My family had their difficulties with Jim, but they’re more underground.”
