She got married really young to her high school crush. Had her first son while still in high school, and had 3 more in the next 7 years. She was thrust into adulthood too early, due to the early marriage and pregnancies, missing a key part of youthful development (ages 18 - 25) where you figure yourself out and grow up. Now that she is separated/divorced from first husband, she is experiencing a freedom she hasn't had since she was a young teen. Thus the arrested development behavior.
I've seen this happen to several people I knew.
After early marriages and terrible divorces, they went on drunken binges, smoked, did drugs and slept their way all over town (in a complete departure from their previous self) behaving atrociously for a period of time before they 'fell into co-dependency again' and remarried and became their previous dependable, monogamous person like before.
She got married really young to her high school crush. Had her first son while still in high school, and had 3 more in the next 7 years. She was thrust into adulthood too early, due to the early marriage and pregnancies, missing a key part of youthful development (ages 18 - 25) where you figure yourself out and grow up. Now that she is separated/divorced from first husband, she is experiencing a freedom she hasn't had since she was a young teen. Thus the arrested development behavior.
I've seen this happen to several people I knew.
After early marriages and terrible divorces, they went on drunken binges, smoked, did drugs and slept their way all over town (in a complete departure from their previous self) behaving atrociously for a period of time before they 'fell into co-dependency again' and remarried and became their previous dependable, monogamous person like before.