Codependent Dissociative Identity Disorder
The
counselor then said and the others
quickly agreed that I am
"codependent." When I asked what that
meant, they said that I am with Kristin because I need
someone to depend on me. I
thought to myself that that didn't sound right. I had decided not to marry when I was 40 years old
precisely to not have a wife and children depend on me so that I can focus on missionary work. Moreover, my long relationships with former girlfriends had all been fairly
balanced. I believed in protecting women and giving more than receiving, and
felt most comfortable in 60:40 relationships where I was giving 60 and receiving
40; I had never been in a predominantly care-giving relationship like the
current one and yearned for it to balance out.
They insisted that without being codependent, a person would not choose to be in a relationship with someone who suffers from dissociative identity disorder or any in other relationship that requires just giving and giving and getting nothing back in return. I asked them what they then thought of Jesus' words in John 15:12-13, "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends." Was Jesus commanding love or being codependent? When Jesus sacrificed His life on the cross to save us, was it out of love or codependency? They neither replied nor seemed affected by my questions.
I later asked the engineer if he would have married his wife if he had known that she will end up in the condition that she is in today, to which he replied, "Would I again marry a beautiful, young and brilliant doctor? Of course I would." His avoidance of my question answered it, and I surmised that his advice for me to marry Kristin now was driven at least in part by his desire to have another husband of dissociative identity disorder sufferer with whom to correspond and attend these conferences.
I had hoped that Kristin will hit it off with the lady hosting the conference and receive some personal ministry from her during it. When we first arrived, the lady greeted me warmly; she greeted Kristin cordially but with less warmth and seemed on guard when greeting her. Kristin is very sensitive to rejection and I suspect picked up on it. The lady put up a sign up sheet for the few seats at her table for the three lunches during the conference. I wanted us to have lunch with the lady so that Kristin can talk to her but Kristin said she didn't want to have lunch with her.
Kristin did participate in all of the joint sessions and all of the breakout sessions for the dissociative identity disorder sufferers, but she didn't seem as motivated as me to be there. She seemed to be still lost in the pain of the blown wedding.