snodderly, this is so true. I see it in my ex, all the masks that he wore. He had the persona with his older brothers, putting on the macho bravado in response to their treating him like the baby boy. He had the persona with his male buds, the guy's guy, never wanting to rock the boat, never calling someone out on bad behavior, just wanting to get along, avoid, and be liked. He had the charismatic charmer with the ladies and in work situations, again, ever the pleaser, never wanting to do anything hard. Not an avoider of hard work or lazy, mind you, but not wanting to deal with anything controversial or confrontational.
I think, from what bits and pieces he told me, he had real anger issues as a young man (learned from a father who had an explosive temper) that led to the end of his marriage to his son's mother when his son was an infant. After that, he made a conscious effort to glue on a new mask, an un-angry mask, and swallow that anger any time it reared its head.
I think the person that I saw come out in the early stages of our relationship and for the first part of our marriage was finally the real person, a fully integrated personality, someone who was at peace with all the pieces and parts, someone who was vulnerable, someone who allowed himself to feel and express his emotions. Someone, who, as he once wrote to me, I had helped "unchain" from the "self-centerdness" that before me, had been his "one and only focus."
But that's a hard walk to walk over time, especially for a man, I believe. And life's challenges and failures make it easier to revert to those things that come more naturally and put those masks back on.
So I feel like I had the benefit of that period of time in his life when he was at his best. Will he ever be able to get back to that? I don't know; I am sure it's a very scary proposition to let yourself be vulnerable again, especially when you, in some ways, believe that allowing yourself to be vulnerable got you to such a bad place.
I pray for him, for peace, for clarity, to be led out of the darkness. All the same things we pray for ourselves.
