Alters and cheating

Relevant to this thread I found a blog (link below) that includes in the comments section a heartbreaking story by a woman Elizabeth about her significant other of 7 years. She and he had begun to understand he had DID and seek psychotherapy, but his system was not ready for it and under pressure an alter switched out who promptly left Elizabeth for another woman. At times the alter who formerly was his host (and still loves her) sometimes peeks at her with abject longing.

Wow do I ever relate to that situation!

HealthyPlace.com: For Partners Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder

Wow, I found this old thread of mine (even though I've posted since) and thought I'd update. Well, my fear of a host change did eventually come to be, much as I'd believed it would. As good as I was to my SO, I could not convince him of therapy (we did bring it up, but only as often as he could tolerate the subject, it usually causes him distress).

The new alter in charge took over and they did leave. Many months later, they started to contact me and still do. I believe more than one alter talks to me, so I suppose it's good they trust me enough to talk to me and tell me how they are. Obviously, I hear many different viewpoints. However, many times I only see him (them) in quick bursts, I am not sure if he sneaks out, or is permitted out, or is locked away...it could be so many things. I wish I could understand a bit better. What happened to the alter that cared for me? Is he asleep? Deep inside?

I am getting by and living life, though I miss them a lot. I will keep trying to help as long as he wants me in his life to the extent he can. By the way, thanks to all who posted in this thread offering their assistance. As always, it's greatly appreciate.

Thanks for updating, Patience. I enjoyed reading your journey. I hope you are a little more at peace with things now.

About the ''missing'' alter who cared for you. I dont really know what to say, but i had an alter who mostly fronted when i was in a certain relationship. Since then, she only reappeared in bursts, like you say. I dont think they are ever truly gone, but dormant. One thing is for sure...you should not put your life on hold for this (and it doesnt sound like you do, which is a good thing).

Thanks for responding. I've posted a lot since I wrote this thread, but stumbled across it today. I wish I could change the title "alters and cheating" because it sounds kind of rude, but I hope it doesn't offend anyone, I wrote it a long time ago.

I have not put my life on hold, but this situation does bother me quite a bit; he (or most of him I guess) was very happy and safe here. The part that wanted out wanted more danger, more excitement I guess. I really miss him a lot. I never would have tried to force him to stay against his will, I wouldn't do that to anyone singleton, or multiple. I do wish he'd return, I can imagine there must be someone inside who would like to come back.

That is the trouble, I think...in a system with so many, there really is no pleasing everyone.

HI this is me we+33 I am almost 67, have been married 6 times, have 4 children and 33 alters. My 4th husband was DID or MPD as I called it 20 years ago when I was married to him. Interestingly my prior husband was 24 years older than me and this nxt one almost 20 years younger than me. Age didn't seem relevant to me, it was the person I fell in love with and possibly because I had alters of all different ages from a couple of months to 84, mostly babies to a 57 year old Catholic nun ( a remnant from my confinement in a Catholic orphanage for a while) & with that nun you didn't get none!! She was always chastising my more free wheeling young adult sexual alters. Top this off with husbad #4 also being multiple. I diagnosed him myself to my surprise and it was confirmed by my PHD psychologist who was renouned in the study and treatment of MPD/DID. So now this very faithful and loving husband had a younger alter named cabin guy who was not faithful. He was meeting women on the internet, having cyber sex and then met one he really liked in person and the affair began and the marriage ended. We are still good friends 20 years later and infact I just told husband number 6 that #4 was coming to work for my son and I in our business. He and my son were almost the same age when they both lived with me. I still remember him sitting on our swing with a lost look on his face when I dropped the multitude of computer history in his lap and said don't even bother trying to deny it Cabin Guy!. So could I forgive him yes, but could he guarantee it would never happen again NO. So we divorced and remained friends. One of his alters is a psychotherapist and it turned out that was why my shrink was so shocked at his expertise in counseling me, his also multiple wife! To this day we are both very emotionally supportive of eachother. Who could better understand what we were going through than another multiple. Of course no one aware of our conditions gave our relationship a chance in hell of working out. The biggest problem was fighting between his alters and mine. He had an obnoxious 14 year old boy who loved to terrorize my little girl alters clinging to him for dear life on the back of the motorcycle he rode like a mad man doing wheely pops and weaving between lanes slipping and sliding down gravel roads. He thought it was funny buy she sure didn't. Fights between our opposing alters was the bane of our marriage. He was also a highly skilled masseuse but turned out he had 1 alter that was rubbing more fronts than backs of the ladies on his massage table. He was just out of control and some of his alters including cabin guy did not think they were married to me, after all I was older than his mother. But still weve had a close bond really understanding and helping eachother even though the marriage didn't work. Here was another problem. He had 2 female alters and one wanted a husband (which I was not) and the other wanted "another woman" because "she" professed to be a lesbian which scared the crap out of me! I had no lesbian alters (thank God) and my male alters were protectors and not sexually interested or active. The strangest thing we ever did was when I convinced my 24 year old alter Jeff to try to make love to his female alter Franchesca. I could rationalize trying that because at least it was one man and one woman even if the roles were reversed. It just didn't work to well because sex was the farthest thing from Jeff's mind. He was the one that drove threw blizzards and ice when I was paralyzed by fear. That was his sole purpose and he didn't even have a clue what to do with a woman especially when she was in a man's body. I guess I have had the craziest life of anyone I know and it isn't over yet! I seem to have experiences in common with most everyone who posts.

me we +33 wrote:I seem to have experiences in common with most everyone who posts.

Same here. It often boggles my mind that our stories are so bizarre yet have such similar elements. No question about it: DID is a valid diagnostic category.

Painfully lonely, horny alters who are not party to the host's marriage are situation normal. Several parts of me identify with your ex husband's Cabin Guy: caught between a rock and a hard place. Does he try to enter (intrude into) his host's marriage to you, or seek other relationships on his own?

I identify as polyamorous, network style, so in theory it is okay by me and my husband if my Alter 2 (or any of us) takes up with someone else. But in practice it is so complicated.

Funny, sometimes I can relate to others posts as well, sometimes someone says something that sparks a memory of something that happened in my relationship and it becomes clear.

Of course, there was an alter(s) that didn't relate to being in a relationship with me, and there had to be a few that probably thought "gross! she's so...OLD!" Although the body is ten years older than me.

The body left another time, too, many years ago, and when he came back one of the first things he asked me was what I would do if this happened again. He was concerned, and he knew that it was a possibility, one that became a reality. So far, I have taken care of things, and have done what I said I would. He pops out from time to time to check in with me.

What keeps him from fully coming back? Why can't he do it? Is he overpowered? He's been gone so long this time.

So I'm hoping that some of you are still active and see this. I know it's an extremely old post but this hits home so hard for me right now and I really would like to hear an update. My husband has one alter (Who I am pretty sure is the protector) who just can't cooperate, and everytime I try to talk with him (in a problem solving manner) he tells me "Keep it up and I'll make sure you never see him again" and it scares me to death. It's been a rough few years as we have been putting this all together and learning on our own, but we have come a LONG way. Today things took a sudden turn and I'm scared that *I* may have pushed too hard. Anyway, I wanna see if any of you guys are still around before I get into much else. (And I really hope to hear from Patience!) Just got here today and this was a great read.

Hi. I'm still around intermittently but I had just made one post in this thread. Since I've known about my DID, I've consistently wished someone had known and made sure I accepted that I had DID.

I'm reminded again in reading this that my mother, who I approached a month before her death to tell her she had DID, expressed the same wish. And this after telling her that she had been a horrific abuser of us, her children, which made her sick to hear. But her host expressed the wish that she had been forced to know long ago.

I don't have advice for how to proceed since your husband's DID and alters are different from mine. The threat to prevent future access to your husband may or may be something that protector can carry out. As a threat, it was meant to scare you but that doesn't mean you have to remain immobilized by fear, which perhaps you aren't already.

In any person's healing, DID or not, therapy, a supportive other, or life experiences may "go too far" many times. That seems almost inevitable in any growth process. It's how muscles are built by exercise, they actually need to be overtaxed in order to force desirable growth!

In some cases, it's the stress of going too far that leads to the growth. One of the main things that led to my discovery of DID was being encouraged to apply for a much higher position in my career that some of my system loathed. If we hadn't pushed too far, we might not have had the breakdown that forced us to revisit potential evidence of DID from our past.

Personally, we're glad we went too far and in fact, we're still upset that we didn't crash and burn earlier in our life so we could have begun healing earlier.