Real Man
Kristin replied that it is normal for the man to provide for the woman,
so I
corrected her that it is normal for a husband to provide for his wife, and that
she should be grateful that someone who isn't her husband has provided for her. How many men did she know who work to provide all food, clothes, shelter,
flights, medical care, college tuition, student debt repayment, and all other
expenses for a woman for five years, including for four years before they
were even engaged, and seek nothing in return?
She replied that I wasn't a real man because real men marry the women they love, so I reminded her that despite all of the reasons why deliverance and integration had to precede marriage, if she hadn't said to me two days before our wedding, "I hope at least the man I marry after you die will be someone that I like," she would be married now. In response, she repeated her claim that the wedding had been a hoax, that I had never intended to marry her in the first place and had planned a fake wedding because I had intended to hurt her.
It was tempting to ponder where we would be today if she - the protector alter with the borderline personality disorder - had been among those who already integrated. And had Kristin not been rejected, abused and betrayed by so many pastors and churches over the previous five years, perhaps the protector alter could have concluded that she no longer needs to fight to protect the rest of Kristin, and integrated.
But such speculation was unfair to her, who had developed borderline personality disorder because she was the one who had stepped forward and fought back against her Satanist father and absorbed the trauma of being raped. The protector alter was the hero and her borderline personality disorder was the battle wound that she bore from sacrificing herself to protect the rest of Kristin from her rapist father. Perhaps she even wants to integrate but feels that the rest of the alters aren't yet safe, so she needs to keep protecting them. In any case, of all the alters, the protector alter arguably had the most right to decide when to integrate or to not integrate. She had more than earned and deserved that right.
But the constant barrage of her false accusations and abuse took its toll, and I found myself becoming worn down, on guard in the presence of Kristin, and lowering my guard only when I was outside running errands on my own.