Unfortunately, Sally’s dreams didn’t match very well with reality. Since they lived in a small town not far from each other, the boys became friends and she would be told all about the “other women” in Donald’s life. This certainly did not lead to either love or security—at least from Sally’s perspective. Furthermore, Max‘s home was always in shambles with a backyard that resembled a “car graveyard.” Sally was torn between not wanting to enter the “disaster area” and wanting to go “fix it up”, Even tranquility was missing, for Max and his boys had hot tempers and differences were always being settled, to Sally’s way of thinking, in a rather uncivilized fashion.
In keeping with many Hollywood movies (the musical “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” comes immediately to mind), Sally felt that they all needed a woman’s touch, a civilizing influence, cleanliness, and manners. During the interview, she indicated that “Max was afraid,” so they never got around to these things. Once, after eight years, they decided to move in together, so Sally mi5ved some (not all) of her things over to Max’s house. Three days later she moved out after he got incensed because she vacuumed too much. These idealistic expectations of hers will probably stay in the back of her mind for many years, as she goes on subtly trying to “civilize” him.
The issue of neatness is actually a subset (admittedly often the most important subset) of a more general issue, namely, who does what around the house? The assignment of responsibilities in many instances (as in the case of neatness) has to do with priorities, values and who is willing to do the lousy jobs. In other cases, the assignment of duties has to do with the actual or perceived competencies of each partner: “I’ll take care of the car, because you don’t know a thing about anything mechanical, and you take care of the garden because you have a green thumb. I’ll handle the checkbook, and you antique the old desk we just bought. What if I buy the china (since I know a lot about ceramics), and you purchase the art work (since you were an art history major in college)? You do the cooking (since I can’t Even boil an egg), and I’ll do repair work around the house (since you keep bashing your thumb with our hammer).
