Spouses of Dissociative Identity Disorder
For me, the most interesting session of the
dissociative identity
disorder conference turned out to be a small one that the lady and two of the
counselors held for the spouses of dissociative identity disorder sufferers.
Since only two of the twenty-one sufferers had come with their spouses, both of
them men, the session was just for the two
chaperoning husbands and me.
One of the two husbands had been dragged to the conference by his dissociative identity disorder-suffering wife but already seemed to have checked out of their marriage as he openly talked about divorcing her. The other was an engineer married a medical doctor whose career outshone his until her dissociative identity disorder came to light, along with memories of horrendous childhood abuse. She was no longer able to work as her main alter now is a child who is petrified that he will leave her. He said the first thing he does every morning is to stand with her face to face, hold her hands, and tell her that he is there for her and will never leave her. He brought his wife to this conference every year and said that he was often the only attendee in this session for the spouses of dissociative identity disorder sufferers.
They treated me as something of a novelty because while few survivors come accompanied by husbands, I was said to be the first fiancé of a dissociative identity disorder sufferer to attend their conference. When I shared about the recent wedding debacle and asked for the group's honest opinions, the engineer immediately said that I should just marry her. Upon hearing his words, the others in the session nearly fell out of their chairs and one of the counselors yelled at him, "You can't tell him to just marry her!" to which the engineer doubled down and added that he felt that the Lord wants me to marry her. When I asked him if he heard the Lord say that to him, he replied that it was just a feeling that he had.
The lady asked me if I am planning to marry Kristin to "rescue her," to which I replied that only Jesus can rescue her and that while we are living through a season in which most of my time and energy is dedicated to caring for her, marriage should eventually and ultimately be a partnership. The lady heard my response, kept her gaze low and did not respond.
One of the counselors then said, "It sounds like you have a lot invested in her," so I asked what she meant by "invested." Did she think that I see Kristin as some sort of investment that should yield a return on investment? I began helping Kristin because she was a brave but wounded missionary - a soldier for Christ - and because nobody else would help her. Marriage had been her idea, and while I love her dearly, I had told her before we got engaged that if after being fully delivered from demons and having all of her alters integrated she finds and wants to marry a Christian man her age, I will walk her down the aisle so that she can have one marriage instead of two or a long widowhood after I die.