Actually, it never would have been this way between my husband and
I -- never -- if I hadn't been blessed (really) to have had the
experience of growing up with two multiples in my house. It still
took me years and years to figure out what, exactly, was going on
(and I still am only clued into a little bit...). This is a little
bit of what happened...

My husband, from the age of 19, when I met him (I was 17), was a
little bit... "quirky." Let's put it this way: on the day I first
met him, he was wearing a dress. In a public coffeehouse in the
middle of the afternoon. He was tall and very thin, and wearing a
long black velvet dress. I thought it was kind of odd, but there
was quite a crew of "goth" kids that spent their afternoons there
after the high school let out, and I thought it was an odd fashion
statement. I like unusual people, and frankly, I thought he looked
fantastic in the dress.

He had some wild, fantastic stories to tell: things about vampires,
and a mysterious world of elves and demons and so forth. He spoke
about it all as if it were real, and acquired something of a
following among the impressionable "goth" teenagers, male and
female. I thought, for the longest time, that he was just trying to
gain some attention, but the odd part of it was, I was almost never
able to disprove anything he said. One of the strangest parts of
his "mythology" (as it were), was his insistence that, because of
his "vampire" nature, the spirits of other beings were able to
inhabit his mind and body. He heard their voices, and sometimes
they kind of took over. I still thought he was making most of it
up; MPD was kind of "cool" at that point, after all. He never
referred to himself as a multiple (and still won't); he spoke of
himself as a kind of residence for these other beings -- some human,
some closer to fantasy-novel creatures... I chose to ignore what he
told me, and the others in his little crew. I listened to all of
it, and I wrote a lot of it down, simply because it made a good
story. But I also knew that he had plenty to gain from
feigning "crazy," or for telling these fantastic vampire tales. The
girls went wild for it... *smile*

He moved away -- just disappeared into the night -- on Valentine's
Day of 1998. I didn't hear from him for a long time, and I didn't
see him again until October 2001. When I saw him then, everything
had changed. Instead of being this charming, mysterious, quasi-
intimidating teenager, he was quieter, and there was something about
his demeanor that was more sad, more submissive. I had NEVER seen
him submissive before, never. It wasn't his style. But it fit him
quite naturally. He was wearing baggy jeans and a t'shirt, a far
cry from the velvet dresses and so forth.

(Incidentally, I once had a therapist tell me that she didn't
believe in MPD/DID, but that she might reconsider her stance if she
went to a patient's house and saw a number of different styles of
clothing in the closets, representing the different alters... I
promptly invited her to my house... She declined, and told me that
my husband wasn't a multiple -- because there was no such thing --
but a transvestite or transsexual...)

Anyway... That wasn't the only thing that had changed. His eyes
were a different color. I mean, I remembered the brightest, bluest
eyes you can imagine. And now his eyes were greenish-grey. I
chalked it up to the passage of time and my own faulty memory,
though. I finally got up the nerve to ask him about all the weird
stuff he'd always been crowing about: the vampires, and the ghosts,
and the energy transfers, and what-not. His eyes glowed blue for
just a moment, and he gave me a huge grin, and he said, "I never
said I wasn't crazy. But I have fun with it!" And then he left,
and I didn't see him again until 2004.

When we finally began dating (I'd been in love with him since that
very first day), in 2004, he was completely different again. He was
quiet all the time, with just this shy smile about him. He was
agoraphobic and almost never left his apartment. He couldn't make
up his mind about anything, not even what to have for breakfast in
the morning. His eyes were permanently green. He wrote me these
sweet little notes on grocery lists and things in this odd "secret
language" he somehow knew from a past life; he taught me a few
words. He also seemed younger, more playful sometimes, but scared
of his own shadow. He couldn't get on a bus, or go to the grocery
store, or anything, unless someone insisted, and went with him. His
whole life was guilt, fear... and hope. But he was nothing like his
gothy-vampire counterpart. I loved both of them, but I questioned
him about it frequently. He chalked it up to growing up, moving to
the west coast, having a couple of crappy relationships... Things
had just changed. But during that time, despite his terror of
absolutely everything, and his near-paralysis because of it, we were
happy. We really loved each other. I could see it so clearly in
his eyes. Neither of us had ever loved anybody the way we loved
each other. We got married, the day after Valentine's Day, 2005.

A few months later, we moved back to the east coast, and something
changed again... He started talking about leaving, and he started
accusing me of being too controlling. (Whoa... not even close...)
He told me he didn't love me, that he felt like he barely knew me,
and that he never really had loved me. He spent house alone in the
garage, just messing around with his computer, taking it apart,
changing the screensavers, etc. We didn't even have internet, so he
wasn't doing anything especially significant... He never went
anywhere because he was "bored," or it was too "hot." But he didn't
seem nervous about going places anymore, just antagonistic when it
came to having anything to do with me... It was so drastically out
of character that I started disliking this person I'd been ecstatic
to call my husband only a few weeks earlier. He was <i>mean</i>.
Really mean.

Finally, in desperation, and entirely heartbroken, I asked my mom
about it. I asked her, "how do you know if somebody is a
multiple?" She just closed her eyes and didn't say anything for a
minute, and then asked me, "why do <i>you</i> think he is?" I told
her about his dozen or so nicknames, his drastic changes, the
headaches, the clothes, the voices in his head. She didn't really
say much. Just, "oh, Carolyn, I'm so sorry. Well... they say you
marry people like your parents..."

He had begun to talk about leaving me, and in desperation, I finally
got up the guts to do what I should have done a lot earlier... I
said: "Listen... Before you make any decision about leaving, or
staying, or doing anything, there's somebody I want to talk to...
Is that acceptable?" He said, "who? Your friend Jason?"

"Nope," I said. "I don't know her name."

He looked puzzled. Of course.

"I want to talk to the one who used to wear the green skirt. Back
in 1997? The one I met who only spoke in whispers and wore the
green skirt. She was my friend, and I want to talk to her."

Well, I had no idea what kind of a reaction I'd get by just
<i>asking</i>. I really had no idea. He might have laughed at me
and told me it was all some big, elaborate role-playing game. Or he
might have feigned ignorance. But he just opened his eyes a little
bit wider, and said, "Her name is 'W.'" And then he sat back,
slumped over a little bit, and seemed almost to lose consciousness
for a minute. And then he sat back up and whispered, "hi..."

Over the next couple of days, they began introducing themselves to
me without me having to ask. Sometimes I did ask: "who is the one
that yelled at me that one day for no reason?" Or, "who is the one
that has the blue eyes?" (He had no idea; I had to describe
behavior.) But, for the most part, they'd just pop right out. We'd
be sitting in silence, and I'd hear, in a different
voice, "hello..." They'd beat around the bush about their names
sometimes, but I recognized almost all of them. He'd hidden them SO
well, but so openly, so plainly. He hid them all right in plain
sight, and then chalked them all up to his eccentric nature. But
once the secret was out -- that they weren't just fleeting figments
of his imagination, that they weren't just stories from a vivid,
kind of loopy imagination, that they weren't just methods
of "getting the girls," etc. -- I got up the guts to ask him a LOT
of things.

The one thing I told him -- my mom advised against it, but I did it
anyway, and I think I was right -- that was so very important was
this: "Listen... I know that these people don't exist in the same
way I exist, that they're not the same kind of flesh-and-blood
beings I am... And the stories you've always told me about these
places with elves and everything... I know they're not on a map
anywhere... But I want you to know that I understand that they are
real in some way, and I respect that they are real to you. In many
ways, they are also real to me... The boy I married isn't the
person who is standing in front of me now, but I know that he is
real, because I am in love with him. By extension, I love all of
you. But please trust me that I believe you when you all speak to
me."

My mom advised against this because she said it helps to validate
the more delusional aspects of DID. As an integrated multiple, and
as a licensed social worker, she would know, I guess. But I thought
it was more important for him to gain my trust, to know that I
wasn't mocking him, and that I really did believe that, somehow, it
IS real... And I still think that was the right choice. She did
advise me to just ask to speak to one of the others, even if I
didn't know his/her name. Generally, it's easy to "call out" one of
the others, at least in my husband's case. If I say, "hey, can I
talk to D. for a minute?" I always get to talk to D. Or if I
ask, "can all of you listen up for a minute?" I get (most)
everybody's attention. I can also ask for privacy ("can this be
between you and me for a minute"), although I don't really think
that's a very good idea in the long run.

Anyway... Have you ever just asked? It might work, and it might
not, and it's scary -- probably for everybody involved. But it
might work out in a really, really good way.

*good wishes*
~Carolyn*