Inside my head

It's been a while -again- since I've been able to write down some thoughts about my life. There has been another turning point, which hopefully has changed the direction of my life to one that is allowing me to be a bit more happy.

It had been six weeks since the disastrous weekend of my visit to my partner in France when I received an email, stating that my partner had the following week off from work and the children would be away for the holidays. It was kind of a shock to receive a nonchalant remark about the days off and a request to have some holidays with me. As if nothing had happened. On top of that, I was 'blamed' for being distant, while my partner reacted like that constantly. I have been trying to communicate about how I felt, what it did to me, what I thought of it, yet nothing much came in return. Despite the pain that my partner had caused which caused parts of me to disappear, I tried to keep the communication open. Yet, everything I had tried, it was all wrong.

The nonchalant remark about the visit came after several days of silence from my partner's end. I had sent an email about something I had arranged for my partner. I was fed-up with the strange way of communicating and couldn't gather enough sense to be nice and I had just send a one-liner stating the necessary information after nearly a week of no communication. I suppose the lack of communication was partly my own fault. Ever since the disastrous weekend I was hoping for an apology which never came. When I hinted on it, it was perceived as an attack, yet it didn't make my partner think about the behaviour during the weekend or the following emails.

I had already been thinking and writing about the problems of our relationship in my diary during the days before the idea about a visit arrived. That did have a sobering effect and made me realize what I need in a relationship, which needs appeared not what my partner was able to give. The problems were going back to the beginning of our relationship and the returning arguments were all about these problems. My thoughts about the relationship in my diary showed me clearly that if nothing changed, it would end soon. Apparently one part of me had even set a deadline. A few days later the email conversation had restarted.
Unfortunately both my partner and (another version of) me ended up in another pointless argument about what the other did wrong or didn't do. At some point my partner had written something that fuelled my anger and caused me to write most of what I had already written in my diary. I was about to send that, but someone else (of my internal 'family') stepped in and wrote a very sensible email. -- I wish I knew more about my internal family, some keep suddenly popping up, doing something and then disappear without 'me' knowing who that was. The sudden switch of tone, style and clarity show me that it wasn't me. There are too many 'me'-s and most don't allow to be named yet. It is hard to keep track of what happened and who did what. --
The sensible one didn't seem involved in my relationship. That does sound perhaps a bit weird, but she felt no emotional (or other) connection with my partner. But since our body is engaged in this relationship, she did feel the responsibility to make sure the relationship wasn't destroyed by arguments and insisted on exclusively constructive discussions.

My partner didn't seem to get our need for an apology, so she (the sensible one) kept insisting on trying to get what was needed in order to be able to face my partner somehow. A decision to meet our partner was made and we had invited our partner over, which in turn caused my partner to behave weird again and we received very limited responses to our emails.
We called my partner on the evening before the planned flight here, demanding to know what was going on, since the communications seemed to have ceased and returned to the bare necessities. It seemed my partner was down in pieces about the upcoming visit and the last emails. We proposed to continue the talk through Skype as the costs for phoning is around €0.50 per minute. I do not recall the conversation exactly (I wish I did), but the important part is that she (the sensible one) managed to express the need for an apology (for the destruction of our 'home', as we feel we've lost our 'home' since the terrible weekend and the cutting off of yet another part that was engaged in the relationship with my partner). I do need to explain that last part. Looking back through my diary and examining what happened during my relationship, I discovered that there was a returning pattern of certain problems, but also whenever things got out of hand and ended in an argument, a part of me had 'left'. At the hight of these arguments, the leaving part does want to leave physically at first, yet with the 'right' triggers another part can be persuaded not to leave physically and give it another try. My 'problem' works in this case as an advantage, but I never realized that I would indeed run out of parts that would like to continue the relationship at some point. That point was reached during the weekend I visited France.

In all fairness, I do need to mention that living with me (us) is anything but easy. Even I can't stand myself on a regular basis. Now that I've been trying to understand how we work for the past year, things gradually have become a bit clearer. It wasn't only the understanding and acceptance of being a multiple, but also the fact that we're a broken multiple. I'm still convinced that multiplicity is a normal psychological mechanism, however, in the wonderful world of psychiatry there is still an enormous amount of controversy about this subject. But the change in the DSM from Multiple Personality Disorder to Dissociative Identity Disorder is one of the indications that multiplicity isn't a mental illness. The same idea seems to have been accepted by psychologists who design tests for workplace candidates (largely the 'situation tests'). The problem is still the acceptance of multiplicity and also that multiples can be 'broken'. I digress, so back to my situation.
Ever since I tried to accept the fact that I'm a broken multiple, I have been trying to find out who are there and what they do. It isn't an easy task, the system is designed to work undiscovered, after all it's a protective mechanism. Gradually I started to see some of my 'internal family' members that I have. I do have to be careful about what I write, if I'm about to tell too much about my internal world(s), I get blocked and am unable to continue to write. Whilst writing the above I have been balancing on the edge of what I'm allowed to say.

The shock of discovering that not all parts love and feel connected to my partner was something that took me a long time to fully understand and accept. Especially the consequences of this realisation are difficult to deal with. I have always valued honesty and tried not to hide anything from my partner. But how do you tell someone you have vowed to share the rest of your life with that not all of you have that emotional attachment? To make matters worse, there is also a linguistic rift. The parts that are in my native language think and feel different about my partner than some in English or French. I'm still uncertain about the consequences in the future, but I think and hope that my partner does understand what it means for our relationship. To some extend my partner has witnessed 'non-attached' parts in action. When we discussed our future a few days ago, my partner did indicate that there was an understanding for my need to allow others to do what they need/want. All within reasonable limits, of course. Yet this is something that still need to be worked out better and specified better as we are terrible at guessing boundaries.

I do have to thank my ex for helping me think about how I work. My ex did mention that I have been contradicting myself in my wishes and what I wanted or said. So this isn't something new at all, it's been there all along. Thinking back even further I find more and more evidence of this. On one hand I wished I did knew this before engaging in relationships that (looking back) were doomed to fail. On the other hand I'm glad that my current partner wants to be part of my life, despite my/our obvious disadvantages. I do realize that there is still a lot to figure out and work out, but we can't do everything at once and certain changes require little steps at a time.

So the result of the past weekend visit was better than expected. We spent a lot of time discussing a lot of things and I hope this will continue. We've entered a new chapter.