Alter in love was a mystery to me

Hello, Carico here. I am new to this forum.

I am partnered/deeply in love with a man who has a multiply ordered personality. (DID)

He just realized he is multiple a little over a year ago. I knew before he did and with my support; he was able to come to recognize this. We are still discovering the 'who's who".

There are definitely signs, both internally and externally; through certain people in his life, that he has intentional 'programming' and is still being accessed by folks who don't have his best in mind.

I am happy this stream is still active.

Long story short: He recently told me he (well, an aspect of him) resumed a sexual relationship with his previous girlfriend... a YEAR ago. (ouch)

'My guy", who I call the constellation of aspects who I have been in very loving and deep connection with for @2.5 years now, discontinued the relationship with this woman 6-8 months before we met because he realized he was not 'in love' with her the way she was, and she had increasingly exhibited some fairly toxic mood states which were negatively impacting his daughter (and him).

This woman, however, moved 3 doors down from him and has kept in very close contact with his mom.

(His also seems to be a multi-generational kinda deal. Which he has had moments of realizing, followed by periods of denial.)

The 3 times I have ever been in contact with her; she shoots a look right thru me of pure venom (no exaggeration) and clearly despises me.

His mom has always "favored" her and says so by telling him, she is more "his type".

When I first came into his life there were a couple people who clearly were not happy with my presence and did not like our immediate and very loving natural bond.

(He cut ties with a couple of them. Or so I thought. She was one of them.)

I am sure some of you can hear, what i am likely facing. That it's not 'just' (Ha) a matter of an aspect of his wanting another relationship.

He and I are just now in the process of sort of 'workshopping' the situation to come to deeper understanding. I am actually waiting for him to reply to perspectives I have shared; so will see.

He clearly has a Lot to work out. And he is wanting to. And I realize how hard it is, he has just started to uncover memory, so, it is quite fresh.

This has been utterly heart-breaking for me. yet, i am determined to 'rise again'; as I love him and am his Only confidant.

We have not found any good therapists in our area. And that's also a tricky one given his apparently "active" status. ..to find someone we could trust.

I guess I am looking for any advice, insight, perspectives folks may have.

It's also been just great to have a place to share this.

By the way, you people are amazing! This stuff is so hard.
Thank you for holding a space for this!

I have just tried to learn as much as I can, especially whenever he "goes away".
Hearing other peoples experiences has been super helpful!
Not sure if I could have come this far without that support.

Thanks again for being here!

~carico

I am moved to write this post by another thread posted recently on the DID Forum: Falling in love all over again

As I stated in that thread, I can relate to that poster's story from both sides, both as someone living with DID and as someone who loves another person living with DID. Sometimes it really hurts.

These next paragraphs may need a TRIGGER WARNING.

I have a little. For most of my life whenever she was out I lost time. I would be going about my business then POOF I would find myself somewhere else and a chunk of time was gone and there was something happening or evidence that something recently happened. Something I would not have participated in. Fortunately I did not lose time often, but that was mostly because I was guarded and careful. I did venture out into the world and have adventures, but always with painstaking research and planning. Risk mitigation, escape routes, contingency plans, reserve resources. I could not explain my disturbing experiences of lost time and so mostly I just tried to forget about them and avoid ever being with anyone who might not be safe.

The "other" man I mention so often in this thread is a case in point. At every initial contact I had with him, I had the very strong feeling he was not safe. I did not ignore it. Instead I came to a very hard decision point: either radically alter my life to avoid this person who had begun popping up everywhere, or deal with him directly. After many weeks of deliberation I chose the direct route. Well, for better or for worse, just a few hours of one on one contact with him was enough to rupture my DID containment system and explode my life. Finally I knew I needed help and I began therapy.

In therapy I soon learned about dissociative amnesia. I then began checking records and discovered that I had been having severe difficulty even remembering this man. I found notes I had written years earlier about the red flags he presented.

Now years later I cannot say I made bad choices. Perhaps they may prove to be smart choices. In any event, back to this little.

In therapy at first this little seemed mature, at least sexually, as is typical of an alter with her role. Her role too was typical: to deal with horny men who violated my boundaries. But on uncovering she turned out to be about 4 years old. As I said, she was rarely out. Because she was rarely out, as the decades passed she did very little growing up. She presented with a thin veneer of glee and a self-image of vast sexual power over men, but underneath that was a deep well of terror. She never, ever wanted to be out. Her entire existence consisted of finding herself in one strange place after another, always with strange men, always in some situation of being used by them. One after the other.

I have told many people about this but very few of them have been able to grasp the import of this story and feel the horror, grief, guilt, rage that I feel. Especially the rage. First adults did this to me and then, as an unknowing adult myself, I kept doing it. For decades I knew I lost time but it never occurred to me to ask who was there when I wasn't, and how they experienced what was happening to them.

I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. I thank you.

Una+, I'm sorry for intruding your thread. I've been following this thread these past few days and thinking of a part of my own story.

6 years ago I met someone who was clearly interested in me from the moment we met. We became friends, my house was his safe spot from his twisted mother and I grew incrisingly comfortable with him as the months passed. As I was in a sort of relationship at the time, and wasn't aware of any "on the surface" feelings for him on my part, I thought of him as a good friend and nothing more.

On new year's eve, at a party at my house, suddenly I looked at him and he was wearing a hat. He looked at me back and the words "I love you" came out of my mouth without me realizing it. We both became very confused, but at the end of the party we slept together.

The next day and from that moment forward, though, I almost couldn't talk while he was near. My voice was childlike and I completely changed from this outgoing, funny person, to a 'need your comfort all the time' person. As he noticed my change to a very clingy child, we grew apart. My psychotic protector, believing in conspiracy theories, aliens implanted chips in our brains alter, came to the front out of nowhere and we broke up shortly after.

Forward three years of several polyamorous and open relationships, we became close again, and it all happened again. This time in his house, we were in his living room and this child took over again and said once again "I love you". He was really annoyed with that, asked me why I was looking at him that way and I couldn't answer. I came to myself again, apologized and asked him to forget about it.

By then, my psychosis was rampant. It only became worse with that trigger of him not loving me back, even though "I" (M) didn't feel like I loved him, although I did enjoy having sex with him. lol

We broke up for good, he was really angry at me and shoved me away from his life. The psychosis made me believe he was in love with me nevertheless, and from there on out I did a bunch of stuff I'm not proud of, short of stalking but not quite, more like a vendetta via very insane text messages telling him he was God and the likes.

He triggered in my pychosis the feeling that there were multiple people living inside of me and that I wanted to be alone inside myself. Towards the end, after my hospitalization and not talking to him for more than a year, I accepted my multiplicity once again but thought they were gods guiding my way.

In reading all of your story, I can now see that there is an alter with me that is still in love with him, even though I never was. It certainly explains a lot, and I realize that instead of brushing this alter's thoughts and feelings aside like I've been doing, I need to cherish her and love her, that maybe she just thought he was there with her and felt comfortable next to him, to come out and show herself to someone.

Outside of those particular situations with that particular person, she never fronts or communicates with me at all. Sometimes I do remember him and this feeling rushes over me like my long lost love is lost, even though I really feel like I never did meet the love of my life, if there is even such a thing at all.

So, thank you for sharing your story, you've helped me a lot. And yes, I do relate and understand profusely what I've read here.

Well, that's why I post this stuff here. This thread is all about the bits and pieces of my subjective experience that I don't find well described elsewhere. But I am sure I am not alone in any of this, which means there must be others like me, others who also don't find very much content they can relate to on certain issues. So, by posting my stuff I can both work through it for myself and fill some of the gaps in content for others.

So, here is more content...

Post diagnosis, as I've mentioned before in many posts, I have explored disclosing to selected people at work and in my community. Some disclosures were low risk, in the nature of experiments, as I don't care how these people react. Some were higher risk, but perhaps also experiments. I do not go into any background or detail, just state my current situation in brief: I have DID and I found out when I met someone else with DID and it got weird.

Now I am having two issues with people who know.

1. As ever, I encounter men who take a strong fancy to Alter 2. In the past, neither the men nor I understood my variable response to their attentions. Now I find myself quite alienated. And lonely. They don't know me at all, don't even know I exist. This is true even thought they know, because one of us has told them directly, that they are interacting with a multiple. They just don't get it. I even had a conversation with one recently about his indifference to this very important information. I think he read somewhere or was told that he should treat me as one person, same as anyone else. In the past this attitude was not a problem for me but in the stage I am in now, with Una and Alter 2 increasingly co-conscious but still far from integration, it is really painful. (And at the same time I think I do the same thing to Johnny-Jack; when we talk I scarcely acknowledge his own multiplicity.)

2. I am facing another big promotion into a leadership role. One man who knows I am a multiple told me I would do great because I enjoy the work so much. Not so fast. Alter 2 enjoys it, not me. I have been going along with doing the work because Alter 2 enjoys it and otherwise doesn't get much enjoyment. But what about me? Is this promotion going too far? This same decision point has been reached before and in the past I always chose not to go forward, instead starting over on a new career path. Basically Una had enough, took over, and pushed Alter 2 inside. I am sure my bosses could not understand what happened. I would be enthusiastic, engaged, advancing rapidly, all very promising indicators of a bright future, then suddenly I would tell them this future wasn't where I wanted to go, and walk away.

Well, I got the big promotion. And I am feeling so sad and irritable! I am sticking with it and part of me really enjoys it but why, why, why do I have to do this? There are other things I would rather be doing. Okay, people, remember why we are sticking with it: we are trying less splitting, less all-or-nothing. Stick with it and don't neglect other goals.

Congratudolences? I could so relate to that, Una and Alter 2. Our work host Johnny recently signed us up for taking on a bigger role in a prominent work project for about a year. Not a promotion but more visibility, more accountability, higher risk. Other host John said no, don't, but Johnny said he handles work, we're more stable nowadays, and said he was making a
"strategic decision." This and other events have made it clearer John and others really do not much like our job. "Why, why, why?" -- exactly John's sentiment, probably others. Meanwhile, colleagues have zero idea (thank goodness) this internal disagreement goes on.

Wow, this thread is winding down. I remember when I was first diagnosed, the despair I felt when I realized I had years of painful and costly work ahead of me. Well now years have passed and the work is essentially done, complete, finished. Time to move on.

My family life and career are flourishing like never before. I am less "overfunctioning", less self reliant, generally more relaxed, and paradoxically far less hypervigilant yet at the same time more aware than ever of signs of interpersonal trouble. Reading widely in clinical psychology, not just about DID, has taught me a lot about other people's behavior. Also paradoxically, being less self reliant is a big part of being more effective: I now ask for help (!) more often and I no longer feel I must wait for a crisis before asking for help.

I am spending far less time on the DID Forum now. That is the natural course of participation in a good online support group: people get well and move on to new activities.

Una+ that really great to read. I'm happy to hear of all your progress. It gives me hope. Best wishes to you as you journey on.

I was so glad to find your thread. it was a life line for me at the time.

Recently I had an experience that I want to share.

There has been a colleague at work who has been fairly steady with me for all these years through my crisis, diagnosis, coming out, and so on. We interact only occasionally, often going months without contact. He was there the day it all began, although not a witness to those events.

One day a few years ago he got all googly-eyes at me and then withdrawn. Uh oh! That pattern of behavior, especially the withdrawn part, has continued ever since. This "come close" switching to "stay away" behavior is typical of an avoidant personality. And it gets to me. So finally I brought it up. He said no one else ever told him he does that, and that he wasn't aware but I pick up on things others are not aware of. How's that for a non-denial denial? Anyway, reading him requires no special perceptiveness on my part. His avoidant behavior is well known to (and complained about by) our mutual colleagues. For example, after meetings he often gets up and leaves without saying a word to anyone. I never was offended by this but some others were; I know they were because they said so.

Having thought long and hard about what conscious thoughts he might have about me, I then told him he needn't worry about other parts of me popping out with him and it getting weird. He said that was a relief to hear, actually. I am relieved that he is relieved. And I think I was on point and avoided making him feel too threatened.

So I am pleased with myself about how this difficult conversation went, and at the same time I am feeling a lot of emotional pain, mostly grief, because this is how I was for most of my life. I was, like him, a person who got up and left without a word. It did not occur to me that others would find my behavior hurtful. And it was a lonely way to live.

And, coming out continues to yield good outcomes. I can have this conversation now because other conversations have gone before, each one a small step into relationship without anyone getting too scared or overwhelmed.