Masterpiece still in progress...

[Jer2911]

I am glad that you had a chance to see the person behind the mask...

Or...

Did you really just see another mask....

I am not saying that it was, or wasn't. What I am saying is, to be careful that this wasn't another attempt to gain control over the situation....

Use your knowledge to see the difference for yourself.

Stranger things HAVE happened...

I did think about that... But, based on what happened yesterday with another family member and what I know from living with her for nearly 10 years, I do think she let her walls down and that I saw the person behind the mask. And that she's really having a big nervous breakdown right now...

As I begin to look at the whole big picture and put more of the pieces of the puzzle together -- here is what I am beginning to believe...

She's probably been depressed (undiagnosed) for years -- probably from before she ever met me... We met and she was on the infatuation "high" (helped along with our very active social life with lots of friends, drinking, traveling together, etc.) up until she got pregnant... Then the depression kicked back in (probably helped along with shifting hormones) and after the kids were born we became so busy being parents while the depression dug in deeper... Over time -- more stress, depression continues to impact her perceptions of life and her memories of us together, hormones continue to shift as a result of midlife and peri-menopause, and then BOOM her stepmom dies unexpectedly (they were very close) and she begins uncontrolled spiral into major MLC and concludes that she's never really been happy or "in love" with me and that our relationship/marriage needs to end at the same time that she begins developing an EA with a much younger OW online (which became PA a few weeks ago)...

Maybe I'm wrong in my assessment of all of that -- we will never know unless she really begins to work through all of it in therapy... and I'll only know for sure if we ever reach a point where we can really talk about all of it.

But -- sure, you could be right... maybe it is just a new mask... But something tells me this is different... something is happening... something different...

I know her walls will go back up and that this was only temporary... So I don't think the "awakening" is happening... Maybe just that there are beginning to be some cracks in the walls...