I got an email from my husband this morning telling me he's been
talking to somebody (lawyer?) about divorce paperwork... We've been
separated for a year and a half now -- he left, much to my dismay --
but I've maintained this hope that it wouldn't really come to
this...

Sometimes, he tells me to "hang in there," and the alters tell me
that
they can't hope to predict what decisions he'll make in the
future...
They've told me that things can always change, and not to give up
hope... They have pleaded with me, sometimes even yelled at me, not
to just give up and leave the state... One, quite menacingly,
informed me that he had not spent as much time and energy as he had
forming his family only to see me give up on it and disappear off to
the opposite coast...

But at the same time, we go for months without speaking. I send
emails all the time, and I've tried calling a great number of times,
and I seem to get only silence. He has a girlfriend (who treats him
like slave labor and controls every move he makes, which includes
expecting him not to speak with me), and he has encouraged me to
feel
free to date or "move on." We have talked about divorce, but I made
it clear that I am still in love with him, and that I would only
sign
papers if it was truly what he wanted. After a year of not having
mentioned it, I kind of thought maybe things would change
somehow...

This isn't a normal kind of "Dear Abby," problem. My husband isn't
just "conflicted." It's not a matter of the two of us not getting
along, because most of the time, we're the best of friends -- no
fights, no arguments, no major disagreements. While we were living
together, we had a wonderful relationship; the separation shocked
me.
I've tried to explain this to "supportive" people -- friends, even a
therapist, and their resounding answer is that he's insane,
manipulative, and controlling... But I honestly still think that
most
of these problems are a result of "parts" of him being steadfastly
in
love with me, and other "parts" being entirely resistant to (read:
terrified of) real emotional intimacy. I promised this man that I
would remain with him, in sickness and in health, and I meant that;
I
truly do love him. If he had cancer or was a paraplegic, I wouldn't
give up on this marriage... He's not in therapy, and after a
bazillion diagnoses that didn't fit, medication that didn't work,
and
rather insulting (and inaccurate) psychological evaluations of his
character, it would be difficult if not impossible to persuade him
to
go back to therapy...

I know I'm supposed to take care of myself first, make sure that *I*
maintain what sanity I've got, but I don't know how I can possibly
just give up hope on this marriage working out somehow... In the
short time it was a real marriage, it was the best thing that ever
happened to me... I want to make this work somehow... It's not
especially helpful to hear other people (who are all too used
to "singletons") tell me that he never loved me to begin with, he
married me for all the wrong reasons, and that I'm deluding myself
that he ever really cared at all... It doesn't help, of course,
that
nobody else has caught on that the sixty freaking nicknames he uses
aren't just "nicknames," -- nobody believes me in the slightest that
the man who married me is the "imaginary friend" (as I try to joke)
of
a very confused, very damaged, but very wonderful man... And of
course, he's entirely unwilling to tell anybody the truth, so it
often
makes me look like the delusional one in the relationship... It
looks
like he simply left me for another woman. If it were as simple as
that, I could have grieved for what I thought had been, and begun to
move on. As it is, I have strong suspicions that a part of him (or
several) want nothing more than to remain with me... I can't bear
to
just walk away from that... Still, talk of divorce is pretty
straightforward... It's just that I still don't believe that
they're
all in agreement on this one, just as they were not all in agreement
when he/they married me...

In a strange twist (a <i>very</i> strange twist), I met another
multiple and we became good friends and room-mates for a little
while... He was in therapy as a young man in foster care, and had
several therapists see him because none of them could figure out
the "other part" of him that emerged during hypnotherapy, and no one
could make sense of his pathological inconsistency and his
reported "voices" and his sensation of being controlled by another
part of his mind... (The therapists told him all this, but stopped
short of diagnosing him officially, because they "didn't believe" in
MPD...) This friend of mine is a remarkably talented psychic. I'm
more skeptical about these things than most people, but he's
predicted
some astonishingly accurate things, even rudely announcing people's
deepest (and entirely nonsensical) secret phobias... I've read
about
multiples being pretty good with things like that in some cases, and
I've often "happened" to run into my husband in strange places, and
then had him insist that he'd "called" me with his mind... In any
case, this friend of mine insisted one evening that he wanted to
move
out of our apartment because "your husband is going to come back to
you, and I don't want to get in the way of that." In nearly every
other instance where he made predictions like that (especially those
spontaneous ones), he's been dead on... A huge part of me would
like
to believe that he's right, but another part of me knows that this
hoping, month after months, is hurting me terribly...

I don't know if I'm so much looking for advice, although it would be
welcomed if you have any... I think I'd just like a friend who
believes me...

I've got to go back to work... Just needed to get some thoughts
out...

By the way, is there any way to stop the rampant spammers from
attacking this forum?