Identity

Have you ever wondered how on earth people can be so blind to what people around them are like? Why they can't / don't see? The obvious example is the Little Princess but she isn't the one that springs to mind. Someone I know spent many, many years with someone and had a child with them. Moved to this far end of the country with them leaving an entire life behind.

And then one day the partner tells them that it is all over. The partner leave. It slowly transpires that they are having an affair. It seems they didn't settle in their new job - no one liked them, so the partner quits and after a few months of limited interest moves back in and reclaims child and the person I know, from one day to the next, finds themselves homeless.

They also find themselves reviled and slandered as if they were the one that had committed the wrong but they had no affair, left no home and deserted no child. I know you never truly know what goes on in anyones relationship but what could they have done to have deserved this?

What gets me is that they loved each other for all those years but either the person they loved never existed or they have changed beyond recognition. I am not sure which of those is most unlikely! How can someone hide who they truly are for soooo many years? What can make a person change beyond recognition? I just don't get it....

Even more bizarre, what can make someone ignore all those little signs that someone isn't who they thought, that things arn't quite right?

As a child we had some family friends. A lovely couple, one of my favourites. Then one day the lady got cancer and in time she died (I am so glad treatments have come so far since then...). After her death the man was desolate, for a time. It soon became evident that the lady had bought out the best in him. That her influence had disguised the side of him that was sometimes silly and a little materialistic. The man he was without her, wasn't the man we had all previously known....

I know F brings out the best in me and makes me a more generally relaxed and easier person. Maybe in some relations one person effects such a transformation on the other, that so many aspects get repressed... What happens when all that repression comes out in one foul swoop? Do they become the opposite of everything they were in the relationship? Is this change permanent?

I know this happens with twins, it happened in another family I know. One twin was wild and unsettled and unhappy, the other happy, settled and family orientated. The wild twin killed themselves and the settled twin took on the wild twins personality.... This turned the lives of many people on their heads overnight?

Is personality and identity actually as fixed as we think it is?

The mind has layers. My Gran would often behave atrociously. That little mental voice in her head would retell and retell the story of the events until it was a version that made her look better and she was happy with. She genuinely didn't believe she was in the wrong. Her subconscious personality took care of that. I have seen it with others to. Sometimes their motives can be clear as day to others but they seem ignorant of what is truly going on inside the deeper layers of their own heads. Most people don't like to look to hard at their motivations....

Personality is a surface chance of chemistry and anatomy. It is an accident that can alter temporarily or permanently with a pill, an event, a breath of fresh air... Sometimes for the better, and sometimes the worst. It is the oily sheen on the surface of deep waters.