DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

In his early thirties, Leon finally starts to question his life and his marriage.
He feels like his “batteries had run down” (p.4). He and his wife go to a marriage
counsellor, the result of which is that he decides to move out of the house for a while.
He is then able to see that he wants out of the marriage. The time of separation, as
with so many cases, brings both positive and negative emotions:
“One is that having finally decided that I would have to split from Samantha, and I
felt emotionally wrung out, desperately sad about having to do this, and it was like
failing in life, it was painful, there was a lot of misery that surrounds it.” (p.8)
“Its all to do with feeling a) a sense of relief, because finally decisions can be made,
and it’s the difficulty of making the decision that adds so much to the stress, and
coupled with that it brings a sense of optimism that you can go on and build
something new that would be better than before.” (p.8)
Phase 3 and 4 – Late Crisis and Post-Crisis: Towards Equilibration
In this cluster, resolution and exploration of new activities occur interactively
as the two men moved towards a new relationship and a new, more personally
directed, life structure.
To Search or Not to Search
Leon’s crisis was an emotionally very painful time, but he says that as a result
of it, he has enhanced understanding of himself. He has “a better appreciation of
where I am, why I am the way I am, and what the limits are of what I am.” (p.9).
Beyond this fact, little was learnt about any inner transformation that Leon
experienced. It may have been that an intense work life, possible problems with child
access after the marriage and his wife’s new boyfriend, prevented any genuine time
for exploration or self-searching. It may however have been simply due to lack of
disclosure during the interview.
Vern was more forthcoming about the changes in his sense of self.
After separation from his partner Naomi, Vern turns his attention on himself:
“What happened with the Naomi situation was one in which I said right you need to
think about this quite a lot, and from that moment I began the process of dismantling
this façade that I’d been building and asking exactly who…are…you?” (p.10)
He goes into therapy to help this process. He temporarily moved to Cambridge during
this exploratory period, but finds this exacerbates the sense of post-separation
loneliness, so moves back to London again. The period for Vern was principally a
time of internal exploration, rather than external exploration, a time he describes as
“navel-gazing”:
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