After reading the following case study please answer: 

1. What are some of the challenges that this individual is facing? 

2. Knowing these challenges associated with trajectories and transitions, evaluate the developmental crisis and implications for an individual facing the psychosocial crisis of intimacy versus isolation.

CASE STUDY

A young man reflects on the delights of being in love, the disappointments of early career, and the decision to make a change. 

In the course of our courting, there were frisbees-a-flying, beers-a-flowing, big bad barbeques, and more than a smattering of smooching and cuddles. Being together was easy and always.

We married in 1997, healthy, happy, and excited about our lives. All that we wanted was to be together and continue the fun and goofiness that attracted us to each other in the first place. Simple enough, seeing that we were getting married and all, right?

Change from 1998–2007 included such delights as increased pant sizes, long work hours, more doctor visits, decreased intimacy, a slump in the fun fund, fewer hours together, lack of peaceful sleep, lack of creative endeavors, and an increase in mindless spending, just to name a few.

What the hell happened during this nine year black hole of productivity, progress, and pleasure? Work happened. Two crappy jobs that we allowed to suck the life right out of us.

Fun, where ever did you go? 

Mornings were filled with sullen grunts, brooding silences, sick heads and stomachs, and occasional weeping. Yes, even that. Evenings were a noxious mixture of prickliness and anxiety with the additional strain of trying to show love in the absence of the resources to make it so. The night was all tossing and turning with our minds running and repeating disturbing scenarios of the following day despite total exhaustion.

Finally, we admitted that we were very unhappy apart from each other, so we quit and opened our own guitar and tutoring studio.

Sullen morning grunts became laughter and five mile walks. The death defying and lonely commute became an animated discussion or business meeting on the way to the studio. Our commute now enjoyed together. Incompetent coworkers became employees of the month – every month. We really did hang an award on the wall of the studio too. Work hours got slashed by 50%. Evenings became filled with conversation, reading, and excitement over our tasty vittles. I can feel the excitement over the changes even now as I write and relive the lifting of the immense burdens of the past! Before we sleep, there is usually one more fit of giggles about some asinine thing we said or did. And night time now was filled with blissful, peaceful, complete, high-quality sleep – oblivion.

We wanted and got our time together back. And now that we have it, we clench it in our jaws like a rabid Tasmanian devil with a chip on its striped shoulder. And fun has returned screaming with vengeance.