She married one, who left her for a stewardess. The husband, Stan, is excellently played by Herb Edelman. And he is a jerk. But he is a jerk in the Babe Ruth-sense, not the con-artist sense. That is, he is natural man without the pride. He committed adultery during his marriage because, well, the women were there--and they said, "Yes." He invests in any idea that comes along. He is the exactly the kind of guy to get his girlfriend pregnant, get married at the insistence of the parents, and then slump through life waiting for life to...keep being life.
"Why did you ever marry him?" Blanche asks Dorothy at one point.
The brilliance of Dorothy and Stan, however, is that despite the divorce, they carry with them the same patterns of married life, good and bad. There's a reason why counselors instruct divorced couples not to date each other again. The familiar is security, comfort, surety. It is tempting. And Stan, despite his choice-less life, has a fuzzy likability, due in large part to the actor. And Dorothy, despite her outspokenness, needs seven seasons to finally take responsibility for her dating choices.
Dorothy and Stan should never have gotten married. But it's understandable why they would function well together anyway, at least long enough to raise a few kids to adulthood, and why they keep coming back into each other's orbits.
