DSM is not a bible and it doesn't need to be brought up on all occasions. DSM explains the skeleton of disorders but doesn't say so much about the rest, about what people feel and think or what their lives look like. So maybe we can put the book down for a minute?

I can say how I felt on the receiving end, my friend dissociated and talked to me on messenger. He said things that made me question if I wanted to be his friend. I got very confused and quite hurt. So I actually more or less told him not to speak to me again.

He was devastated and very confused too. He acted like I had no reason to be upset with him.

So I confronted him, finally, after several months, with what he had said to me, and he was HUH I never said that. I had to piece it together with other times especially one time I didn't witness myself but where he had to realize he had "been someone else" because there was proof.

I thought back on the messenger conversation and realized a lot of things were off and how it had sounded quite like someone else.

When I realized what had occurred I took him back as a friend, even though he still denied that thing had occurred, I realized he didn't want to face it. When I understood I had talked to another part that he was not aware of, I realized he had done nothing to me on purpose and there was nothing to be mad about. Before I realized that, I felt like he was just plain messing with me. It was really key that I understood the dissociation part of it all.

His other is the type that wants to mess up and destroy things for him and mess with everyone else. It's not a particularly nice other. But I'm OK with this other living inside my friend because now I know this entity exists and I would recognize it the next time.

I really like my friend and I'm a little sad we had this episode of misunderstanding but glad we could patch things up.

I'm not the same person as your friend but if we are anything alike I think your friend needs to know this was not something you did on purpose or meant to do.