A (very long) introduction

One more clarification. I have never been formally enrolled with or diagnosed by a therapist. The situation in question involved a friend of the family who was a therapist with the state (specifically child protective services), but she offered her services as a friend, not in an official capacity.

I actually had come here to request that my account be deleted, since I hadn't logged in for over three years. However, I re-read this thread, and I thought it might be helpful to give an update.

The TL;DR is that my system collapsed back into a singular person - me - starting about two years ago. Over the last couple of years, the remnants of the walls in my mind have largely disappeared, and I no longer consider myself to be a multiple, though there are still aspects of my mind which operate a bit differently than normal.

Now, for the slightly longer version. About two and a half years ago, my system began to experience a greater awareness of exactly what it was. While my male and female alters had known for some time that they were, in fact, alters, the emotional reality of that hadn't quite sunk in. Not until what I can only describe now as reality quakes, moments of clarity where it became obvious that I was literally talking to myself, began to happen. These quickly increased in both frequency and duration until it was apparent that something was about to change.

My female alter began coaching my male alter on everything she felt he needed to know, not quite understanding what was about to happen. She believed that she would simply disappear, and she wanted to share her knowledge and send off my male alter as prepared as possible. This went on for a while, and it became fairly emotional, until one day in January 2016 she did, seemingly, disappear. The last thing she said as a separate entity was "I know".

Except, of course, she wasn't truly gone. The walls that separated them had broken down to the point where I emerged. I, the sum of both of them, was a mess for a while. I was ridiculously emotional over everything, while at the same time feeling like my rational brain was scrambled. Without the internal support system I/they were used to, I started leaning on outside friends a lot more heavily, one of whom is a trained therapist. While we had no official therapy relationship, she helped me through the worst of it.

Over the last two years, I have stabilized a great deal and come to terms with my emotions. I'm still INTP, and heavily analytical, but my heart is online and working alongside my mind. It has been a tumultuous, but rewarding, time. Along the way, I found the self-confidence that had been missing for so many years, and my life has started changing in ways I could have never imagined. I realized that the amazing beauty of my female alter, her loving, compassionate nature, is still mine. I also realized that the quiet fortitude and protective nature of my male alter was also still mine. I hadn't lost anything other than barriers to my growth as a person.

Externally, I am still married to my wife, and I still place protecting my family higher than myself. My wife is vaguely aware of what has happened, but I haven't gone into a great level of detail. Should I have a major regression, that might change, but for now I am going to let sleeping dogs lie.

I have also largely come to terms with the fact that, even now, I am an outlier in so many ways. While my physical body is mostly center of the curve male, my research shows that there is very likely a biological explanation for my strong sense of femininity. I have accepted that my personality is a blend of traditionally masculine and feminine characteristics, and that my orientation is, well, undefined. Unlike in the past, I no longer feel any shame or guilt over that, and I love myself now as much as my alters loved each other then.

Still, while I accepted my inner androgyny a long time ago, I am still learning to express the full gamut of my emotional range in ways which are mature and responsible. I'm also working on allowing myself to cry more freely, rather than bottling things up, and accepting that my need for emotional intimacy is a much larger part of myself than I once imagined. However, more than anything else, I am still rewriting my inner sense of identity based on everything I have learned.

A part of me wishes I had refreshed this story along the way here, but the last few years have been "interesting" in the Chinese sense of the word.

As an aside, I very specifically mention both my male and female alters are separate from myself. That was intentional - I am the sum of their parts, plus all of the things that I have learned and become since.