My h did always recognize that he was withdrawn and non-communicative, until he decided last year that he is a extrovert!
Your h's mother sounds like she was, how shall I say, interesting? Poor guy! Can you imagine how hurt he must have been every time she betrayed a confidence? I have read that the MLCer usually "affairs down" but I also think they look for someone very different from their spouse because they are so sure that the spouse is the reason for their discontent.
I think you are correct in my h's feelings and depression and how he decided EVENTUALLY it was our marriage that was making him unhappy. What I find very frustrating is that I did try to address our issues a few years before we split. I would have been happy and willing to try to make changes had he identified anything but it was always me raising the issue. I didn't get the "IDLY" bomb until after I had ended the marriage. I believe that is because he did love me but decided that he must not around the time he started the affair. When I told him a couple of weeks before we separated that I has lost all confidence in "us" he asked me what he had to do for me to get that back again. If he no longer loved me, he had the perfect opportunity to say so then.
My brother was 44 when he died from non-hodgkin's lymphoma. It was a very agressive form and he died only 5 months after diagnosis. It was heartbreaking for all of us. He was the only person in the family who always took very good care of himself. He was the only person who never smoked, rarely drank, was a track star at university, etc. He was seven years older and I admired him a great deal and miss him every day. He died at the end of October 1999. Less than three months later my h and I were out having a beer one night and I started to cry. H said "Don't you think you should be over this by now?" I guess that should have been a clue to what I had to look forward to.
No, the other niece is not like her mother -- she is just herself. My former SIL is not a nice person at all and we could never figure out what my brother saw in her. They almost divorced once but with counselling put it back together again.
Weekend was uneventful. Honestly, I have been "alone" for a long time. I was lonely then and am lonely now but haven't quite figured out how to fix that yet.
