During their two-hour interview, Glenda and Kurt talked about what is most important for other people to know about them as a couple. With Trisha taking a nap in the other room, they identified child-raising as the central theme in their current life and spoke of the contrast with their past life, when they were free of most responsibilities. Glenda observes that “lately we’re very busy, you know, it’s hectic with Trisha on the scene.” Kurt also includes work on the list of emerging pressures. Glenda agrees: “Yeah, well the thing of both of us working and having a kid, pursuing the “American dream” sort of lifestyle . . . [laughs]. So as far as being a couple or even thinking about each other, it’s sort of hard sometimes.”
Kurt and Glenda don’t have much time together alone any more, what with Trisha, their dual career, and family commitments. While both love their child, Kurt and Glenda also refer to former areas of mutual enjoyment, now largely forfeited, new complex responsibilities within their relationship, and even an inconvenient change in residence they thought necessary because of their child. Trisha’s arrival when they were living in their former home convinced them that they were now too large a family for its confines, and they moved to their current, larger residence. Now, because of the proximity of their house to a busy highway, they are concerned about Trisha’s safety. They are again looking for a different rental with a larger, fenced yard in which their toddler can play.
Glenda and Kurt had anticipated that Trisha’s birth was going to require changes in their comfortable life style, and they prepared for these changes: “When Trisha was first born I [Kurt] took about six weeks off work and Glenda took four months off. So, we were together a lot right in the beginning.” This period appears to have provided Glenda and Kurt with an opportunity to “re-calibrate” calibrate” (Watzlawick, et al., 1967, p.147) the style of their relationship and, in essence, to become remarried and initiate a new cycle of forming, storming, norming and performing regarding the roles each o+–4ftCg*n would play in taking care of Trisha while0caring for their own relationship.
