Over the Shock and GALing 4

[Thinker]

Lucky,

I don't think that the masks are fake. They are a real part of you that you have built onto your core personality. They can't be completely ingenuous, or they won't fit, but you can in effect have lots of sides to you. You also choose to show different sides to different people. A better word than faces may be sides or facets.

Over the years, my W saw, grew to dislike, and rejected the serious, driven, dismissive and opinionated side of me that I too often showed to her. That's who she walked away from. She now keeps me emotionally at arms-length.

She has also seen, and has no respect for, the socially uncomfortable side of me.

I have never shown her the scared, introspective side that writes here. I am only recently admitting to myself that this side exists. I have tried once or twice in the past few months to show my W, but she is not ready to listen.

For my own growth and happiness, I have been rediscovering and rebuilding the silly, fun, social, live-for-the-day side of me. My W runs from this face, because it seems fake to her.

I certainly don't want to show her the crushed, needy, begging post-bomb side that I now try to keep locked in a closet.

So that is where Smileysperson was going. What side(s) of ourselves do we reveal to our WAS's? How do we show those sides when they are still under (re)construction - ie fake it til you make it.

Especially when your intimate partner is no longer intimate, so you can't show them your core, or your more intimate sides.

And especially when, no matter which side you show to them, it seems to provoke a negative reaction.

So you have to piece together a side of you which makes you the happiest under the present circumstances (interacting with your Spouse in a stressed R)