123fred wrote
just 2 things:
First of all, I really like your analogies.
secondly, If you don't mind me asking, how do you all handle having a romantic relationship with another person?
Does it just require cooperation from everyone?
or do some alters go and hide?
Thanks. I really work to come up with something that conveys the idea of multiplicity that people can relate to.
How do you all handle having a romantic relationship with another person?
I'm glad you asked that. We have been involved with Joe since May of 2017. Yes, it's romantic. He's so considerate and kind. We're in love.
We handle it like any other relationship that's important to us. We're honest with him. Just as some people have to come out as gay -- I came out as gay several decades earlier; I came out to my parents (who were clueless) and my friends (who were just waiting for me to bring up the subject). It went well with my friends. Their unanimous reaction was, "No problem. We were just waiting for you to tell us; we've known for ages. It makes no difference to us. Now, do you want to eat Chinese tonight or Thai?"
My parents talked about it and decided, "You're our child; we will always love you. Did you really fear that this might have made a difference? It doesn't." I had great parents.
A month or so into our relationship, we came out as multiple to Joe. We introduced most of us to him. A few of us came out and said a few words. We sound different and the different mannerisms ... well, we probably would have had to get an Oscar for that performance ... unless we were telling the truth. (Anyway, who would make up shit like this?) He thought about it and said it made no difference. He loves me -- all of me (us). He's even learned to recognize when different alters are fronting. Apparently, we all have different habits, mannerisms, and ways of speaking. (For example, Ox apparently snorts like an ox. We never noticed that but when it was pointed out, we saw it.)
Joe did say that sometimes he feels like we're ganging up on him. It's not intentional. But we sometimes have two or three or four different minds trying to find a good word for the Scrabble tiles we have. Being multiple can sometimes be an advantage.
I didn't bother to introduce Snake since he hadn't been around for a few months. I thought he had vanished. He apparently hadn't. He came out and threatened Joe when we had our one big fight. Since we had no memory of threatening Joe, we were appalled. We had no memory of doing that. All of us share memories ... or thought we did. We share the actual event that happened; the emotional portion of the memory is more or less exclusive to the alter who is creating the memory. But not having that memory is ... disturbing, to say the least. I thought we had all agreed to share memories. [It's Honey. We had and still have an agreement to share memories. But Snake wasn't around then. I've talked him into joining us in sharing memories now.] (Yoshi: He didn't share an important memory at least once; he can probably do it again ... and probably will.)
We've talked to Snake about this. He apparently wanted to protect us. We were crying and very upset. He wanted to help ... by saying that if you, Joe, make him/her -- our body is transitioning from male to female, which makes this really confusing. We have some major difficulties with pronouns. -- (Ox, mostly) unhappy, you'll have to deal with me. (He was obviously not Ox, who is kind, gentle, patient, and a few other embarrassing adjectives. By the way, Yoshi wrote that. Ox is also self-effacing and really embarrassed about this.)
Yes, we all love Joe. We've talked about this. Extensively. All of us love him. All of him.
We are treating this as any other romantic relationship. It's just us and him.