[ReRe54]

I am a gay male. I am engaged to get married to my partner next year. The thing is that he does not know that I was once diagnosed with DID. I have never told him. We have been together for a little over 7 years now. There are times he notices that I am different but I just blow it off with him thinking I am moody or tired or whatever. I am 53 years old. At one point when I found out about this I had 32 alters. I worked in therapy for about 7 years and we all melted into one main one...with possibly a couple other left intact. Through this I was able to go on with life. I got BA ...now I am about to be done with a Masters degree.....and for the past few months I am noticing more and more about my DID......hearing things again.....losing some time here and there....finding things I bought and not remembering......the feeling that I am wanting to just take off and go somewhere....anywhere......

I'm thinking maybe it is the stress of getting married and finishing up grad school and then having to look for a job.....maybe too much at one time? Plus my family is NOT supportive of me being gay or getting married to a man.....

I don't know if I should tell him or not. I don't honestly know if he would understand. I thought about getting my therapist I worked with for all those years to send me a letter saying that yes, I was diagnosed with this. I don't know.

Maybe once the wedding is over and the grad school is finished things will calm down....I mean before all this I have been doing pretty well.

I know I am new here...and I do not have a profile up and running on here. But any words of advice would be greatly appreciated.....or any thoughts or opinions......

Thank-you so much.

ReRe54

[possum220]

Have you asked your T? Marriage is all about trust. Put yourself in your partners place. Would you want to know if there was an elephant in the room before you got married?

The fact that you have maintained stability is a good thing. This will show your partner that you are well/integrated. A letter would help but maybe after you have said things in your own words.

Wishing you the best of luck.

[amandalouise]

Originally Posted by ReRe54

I am a gay male. I am engaged to get married to my partner next year. The thing is that he does not know that I was once diagnosed with DID. I have never told him. We have been together for a little over 7 years now. There are times he notices that I am different but I just blow it off with him thinking I am moody or tired or whatever. I am 53 years old. At one point when I found out about this I had 32 alters. I worked in therapy for about 7 years and we all melted into one main one...with possibly a couple other left intact. Through this I was able to go on with life. I got BA ...now I am about to be done with a Masters degree.....and for the past few months I am noticing more and more about my DID......hearing things again.....losing some time here and there....finding things I bought and not remembering......the feeling that I am wanting to just take off and go somewhere....anywhere......

I'm thinking maybe it is the stress of getting married and finishing up grad school and then having to look for a job.....maybe too much at one time? Plus my family is NOT supportive of me being gay or getting married to a man.....

I don't know if I should tell him or not. I don't honestly know if he would understand. I thought about getting my therapist I worked with for all those years to send me a letter saying that yes, I was diagnosed with this. I don't know.

Maybe once the wedding is over and the grad school is finished things will calm down....I mean before all this I have been doing pretty well.

I know I am new here...and I do not have a profile up and running on here. But any words of advice would be greatly appreciated.....or any thoughts or opinions......

Thank-you so much.

ReRe54

we cant tell you what to do but if you are looking for opinions....I live by the saying never start out a marriage with secrets especially not with a mental or physical health problem.

example I am a lesbian and my wife and I got married shortly after New York passed the law allowing GBLT's to marry their same sex partners.

with marriage comes many things like the finances become shared, her bills become mine, my bills become hers too. the result is though the therapy bills, medication bills, doctor bills are all in my name because I am the patient they all come to the same address, through the same postal worker and placed in the same mailbox. Sometimes my wife gets and opens the mail and sometimes I pick up and open the mail. then we sit down together and with our joint and separate bank books in front of us decide how to pay the bills. if theres not enough money in the joint account we have to decide which one of us is going to pay how much or what on a strangling bill that didnt fit into the finances of the joint account. we dont have fights over money or who charged up this or that or why did you have to see this doctor and neither one of us has to sneak around trying to beat the other to the mailbox. my wife knows I have mental disorders and what they were/are before we got married. in fact I told her before we even moved in together (before I was integrated)

DID is unpredictable, it doesnt only affect the person diagnosed with it, it also affect others around them. My wife before we were married ended up having to make the hard choice to call the police more times then I can count because of alters acting out in harmful, suicidal and homicidal ways. She's had to deal with alters taking over during sexs, coming home from work and discovering an alter had charged up all the credit cards, even had to help me get back home from other towns/cities/states and in a few cases other countries I have found myself in suddenly once I became my aware non dissociated self again.

you may only have a few alters now but who ever you end up with, unless you are no longer DID that husband is going to have to deal with the fall out that comes along with having DID - you in dissociated states of mind, you foggy minded, you feeling numb, moody what ever at the wrong times, ....DID is unpredictable. there is no way to know how your alters are going to react to being married, having someone else live full time with you all and what ever other situations that tend to come up for people with DID.

for me there wasnt a question of whether I tell my wife things or not, its a fact that I love her so much that I dont want her to be unprepared for those shocking, unpredictable moments, caught off guard by anything.

I love her through sickness and health, through the good times and the bad, I love her so much that I want to share every day and every part of me and my life with her. thats what marriage is all about. for me marriage isnt about holding secrets/hiding things from the person Im supposed to love so much that I love them through sickness and health so long as we shall live.

my suggestion is if you cant tell this person on your own invite them to one of your therapy sessions and tell them there where they can get information on what this means for you, for your therapist and how this is going to impact their life once you are married.

my opinion better to find out if the person you love can handle being married to you through sickness and health ....before....you get married. so that if they cant then you and this person are not stuck in a loveless/resentful marriage because the person found out out of the blue from one of your alters during a heated or emotionally charged moment, that you were unable to handle (you ssiad yourself that the stress of whats going on in your life is causing problems on the dissociation side of things, well ....stress.... still happens even after a person gets married, even more so because you dont have just you and your alters to take care of, you are going to be taking care of your husband just like your husband will now be caring for not only himself but you too.)

[ReRe54]

Thanks Possum for your words of advice here. I do not currently have a T the one I worked with is out in CA and I am in MI but I guess I could call him. Hmmmmm now that I am talking about this I did work with a T here for a while who was very nice. HE did know about the DID but we really didn't have to work on it at the time. Maybe I can contact him for a session to just talk this over.

You are right marriage is about trust and I would want my partner to trust me.

Thanks again.

ReRe54

[Kiya]

I agree with honesty before marriage. Trust is important and dropping something like DID and alters after the wedding is a huge @_@ you know? If he truly loves you, he will understand and be supportive. If not, that's not something you want to find out after you're already married. And you've said he already noticed some things so... take the leap!
best!