I'm mostly an OOT lurker, but as per these and other requests in the "Worst In-Laws Story" thread I've decided I'll do it. My post in that thread was this:

A little background information first, but hopefully this won't become tl;dr. I'm 25, she's 23 in a week and a half, and we live in rural North Carolina. We've been "dating" for about three and a half years, and engaged for about 7 months. If you count when she's "normal", there are 5 total personalities. On some level they all realize they are part of the same person, but at other times they don't and often talk amongst themselves (mostly in her thoughts but occasionally out loud). Something that complicates this is that she also has an anxiety disorder that causes her to have stress-induced seizures/passing out/amnesia and/or temporary blindness and/or deafness. When she has amnesia, she always forgets everything back to the same time period when we had been dating just a few months, and this has lasted anywhere from 5 minutes to 18 hours before she remembers everything normally again.

I could probably write a couple books about my experiences with this but I'll just answer anything related that comes up and let the thread takes its course.

I'm a very visual person and I find the lack of pics disturbing.

I almost forgot, this was asked in the other thread:

None of them seem to mind, and I've had sex with more than one of them in the same "session". I've had sex with all 5 at one point or another. Neither her therapist nor her doctors have suggested this is anything that will cause harm.

My connection is being weird right now and not letting me go to about half of the websites I try to go to like imageshack, but I'll definitely be uploading some interesting pics.

Oh my god run while you still can..

Describe the 5 different personalties.

Is there anything that triggers a change from one to another, or does it just seem random? What is the frequency of a personality shift?

worst fight story obv.
how do you keep sane?

elephant in the room:

do you have sex with the same personality every time?

What keeps you with her? I mean, evidently there is love and attraction. Still, that's got to be a handful.

Are the other personalities just 'different' and not necessarily unpleasant?

Describe the differences between the personalities.

Describe a situation in which more than one personality comes out.

Do some personalities like anal?

Did she suffer any crazy traumatic event as a child?

What's it like dating a chick with multiple personalities?

Please start with most interesting moments...

i smell a tarp

Perhaps along the lines of what NoahSD said, to what extent do you believe her personalities are truly separate, and to what extent do you think they're part of some weird psychological ruse (either conscious or subconscious)? I.e., if you promise one of them a gift, or dinner out, or something like that, do the other personalities remember it?

Yeah and definitely more description of the different personalities plz.

Can you please provide a brief (or thorough) explanation of each personality, including the specific traits, as well as the names you've come up with. I've been interested in this subject since I read The Minds Of Billy Milligan so I'm very curious.

What do you think (in your unprofessional opinion) about the growing skepticism towards MPD? There are those that believe it is an offshoot of Dissociative Identity Disorder, triggered by a childhood trauma but mostly a product of the therapy process that a patient undergoes.

Have you ever thought that she might be acting this way for attention, to run from her problems, or because her therapist in some way "conditioned" her to feel this way? Basically have you ever felt she was "faking" it or playing up her symptoms?

I guess that's all sort of one question, so I'll ask one more.

Was there some sort of childhood trauma that triggered this?

sorry I couldn't resist. I'm sure you expected a few like this, but I hope it doesn't put you off the thread. It is an interesting topic.

For the names I just need to note that her first/middle names are Rebecca Michelle but she normally goes by Michelle. These are in the order they came out and talked to me. It's important to note that her seizures started about 3 weeks before the first time I saw "Little Michelle", and her parents had no idea she had multiple personalities until all this happened.

Normal - Funny, sarcastic, generally passive/submissive, intelligent, witty, low self-esteem. Kinda hard to write about her normally now that I try to do it.

"Little Michelle" - Thinks she's 7 or 9 years old depending on when you ask her. Realizes her actual age and understands that she's one (of multiple) parts of Michelle. Her speech is much different, she's very shy (especially about sex, seeing me naked, me seeing her naked), she often tries to chew on random things like a book/styrofoam box/cell phone. She's almost always in a very happy mood unless she's scared of something. She likes ice cream, M&Ms, chicken, and cats. Seems to be triggered randomly, but she often "switches" to this personality when she's wanting to ask me something or do something but is scared to (usually for some dumb reason like thinking I'm going to be mad about something random like her computer crashing and her not knowing why). She also switched to this personality fairly often after her seizures when they first started. She also warned me of Rebecca and Rebecca #2 long before they came out. She's kind of like my little helper in all of this.

"Rebecca" - Thinks she's her normal age. Is very assertive and aggressive and a borderline nympho. She does not take **** from anybody. Michelle was aware of this one for months before she ever came to the forefront. She was extremely pissed, and was obsessed with trying to kill herself. She would randomly come out and try to stab herself, cut herself (with knives or anything else, even a piece of cardboard), eat a handful of pills, whatever. She never physically attacked me except trying to push me away when I would be holding her down so she couldn't do the above. This one landed her in the hospital for about a week and a half. Now she's pretty cool. She seems to be triggered by being threatened or being pissed off. She also (like the others) also comes out somewhat randomly from time to time.

(Note: If I refer to Rebecca without the #2 attached, I'm talking about the one above.)

"Rebecca Number 2" - Rebecca #2 seems to be a sort of holding cell for all of Michelle's guilt over various things. She seemed to always know she was a part of Michelle and was the first one to warn me about Matilda. She thinks she's her normal age, and is always extremely tired. She describes it as feeling like she has a giant rock on her chest. When she first starting coming to the forefront, she could only stay around for minutes at a time because it was too exhausting. After which Michelle would usually be really tired and want to take a nap. I haven't figured out anything that triggers this one, but have often encouraged her to come to the forefront to talk about things that are hard to get some of the others to talk about. The first time she came to the forefront she was very weak and moved slow and I thought she was trying to choke me or something, but later confirmed she was just pushing my chest trying to get my attention (we were laying down on the bed facing each other and her hands were between us).

"Matilda" - If Rebecca #2 is a holding cell of sorts for Michelle's guilt, then Matilda is a holding cell for Michelle's anger. When this one finally came out, we had been dealing with everything for about a year and a half and things had started to calm down and start to really improve with her seizures and control of everything emotionally for the first time since it all began. Then Matilda showed up and tried to pull the car off the road while I was driving down the highway doing ~70 MPH. Much like Rebecca, she was obsessed with killing herself the first couple of weeks after she came to the forefront for the first time, except she didn't kind trying to kick my ass in the process. I had to call 911 over this one and get her ass in an ambulance. By the time they showed up she was back to normal, which was really interesting trying to explain wtf was going on to the ambulance guys and the cop who showed up (who was actually a family friend of hers). Matilda is obviously triggered by anger, but doesn't [usually] try to kill herself or hurt herself anymore. She figured out that she was a part of Michelle sort of on her own, but didn't realize it at first and didn't understand it the first time I explained it to her.

As far as total frequency of personality shifts, there have been periods of 3-4 days where she doesn't do it at all, and then there have been periods of 15 minutes where I see all 5 more than once each. If I'm leaving out anything you guys want to know on these descriptions please say so.

You mention personalties coming to the forefront for the first time. Does this mean when you first met her/started dating her, that she only had one active personality? What was the timeline of her descending into multiple personalities?

Worst fight story was the first day Matilda came out and I was holding her in the kitchen floor after we'd came in the house and she was trying to hit me with every limb and slam her head against the floor and the wall. I didn't tell her until a long time later because she didn't remember it but she chipped a piece of fingernail off in my back during this.

As far as how do I keep sane, I've always been really emotionally detached in general, and it's definitely a blessing when dealing with this. I've had some pretty bad bouts of depression since this whole thing started, much worse than anything that I had beforehand. I pretty much just do it, but it's definitely had more effects on me than I'd like to admit.

No, I've had sex with all of them at least once. Yes, even "Little Michelle", but I never initiate it. With Matilda was super scary the first time because I wasn't completely sure she had chilled out yet. She has switched personalities during the act often enough that it doesn't surprise me anymore.

On a side note, we've also had sex when she's been blind and/or deaf from her anxiety stuff. She also experiences these things when she's the other personalities.

She's absolutely amazing. I was 100% convinced I was never going to get married until after I'd been seeing her for about 6 months, and all of this didn't first start until we had been together for about a year, but nothing changed in terms of how I feel about her.

With Rebecca and Matilda, what basically happened according to her doctors/therapist is that they had a whole lot of emotion come out and didn't know how to handle it, so they flipped out for a short period of time. Now most people (even her parents) can't tell the difference between when she's Normal and when she's Rebecca except for her frequency of using mother ----er and the like in settings she normally wouldn't. I can still tell from her facial expressions, but it's subtle. Often I'm not sure why I know which one she is between those two, I just know.

Little Michelle is awesome and always wants to go to a playground or go get ice cream and is extremely loving and cool to hang out with. Rebecca #2 is cool but she has a hard time staying around for longer than 10-15 minutes for reasons I outlined earlier.

I listed them all earlier, but here's a good example of when they're interacting or whatever. Whenever Rebecca first started coming out, her and Little Michelle didn't get along. Rebecca saw Little Michelle as being weak and unable to take care of herself, and Little Michelle saw Rebecca as being mean and sort of a bully. We were talking about how they felt about each other and it was sort of half talking in her thoughts between them and half them almost taking turns coming to the forefront to talk to me or each other. Eventually Little Michelle told Rebecca that she loved her, then Rebecca broke down crying uncontrollably for about 3-4 minutes and since then Rebecca has been pretty normal besides taking crap from people less often.

More proof for the theory that I have about all girls named Michelle being bat **** crazy.

I've dated 3 Michelle's and they were all psychobitches. One of them was a card carrying member of the padded room society.

Take my advice. GET OUT NOW!!!!!!!!!

Do you feel like a perv when you are having sex with little Michelle?

Are you worried that one day one of the suicidal personalities will succeed in killing themselves with you in the car?

She liked anal before any of this happened, and she still likes anal. I haven't kept up with which ones I've had anal with and which I haven't.

When I asked her about starting about this thread, she said it was fine and I could talk about whatever I wanted to/needed to when answering questions. She was molested by her uncle when she was 10ish and her family didn't do anything about it once they found out.

There will be a lot of interesting moments that I talk about, but the very first time Little Michelle came out and talked to me her speech was completely different and very difficult to understand and it was some seriously creepy twilight zone type stuff. She had no idea who she was, but she knew I "was Michelle's boyfriend." Weird stuff.

Now they're all aware of each other and often have conversations with each other, but they weren't always. Most of the time now they remember most of the events that happen with the other personalities, but not always. When they do, the memories aren't always very clear. None of them were aware of Matilda until when she first came out, which was quickly followed by the first time I remember hearing Little Michelle use profanity when she screamed "HOLY SH--!" shortly after Matilda's first appearance in the car. I hope that answers your question, but if it doesn't just say so.

I'll have to give more description of each personality individually at some point in this thread but I'm trying to get caught up on the first batch of questions first. That will take some time.

As for where the names came from, Little Michelle knew her name was Michelle but we just started referring to her as "Little" to differentiate when this thing first started. Rebecca chose her own name, and so did Rebecca #2, which is how she became Rebecca #2. Matilda also chose her name, which was strange because I'd heard Michelle use it as a random name for a zit or something when joking once a long time before, but that was the only time I'd heard the name except for that kid's movie. I'd asked her what her name was and she didn't know so I asked her what she'd like me to call her and she came up with Matilda after pausing for like 2 seconds or less.

I'd seen two personalities and heard her talk about two before she ever got into therapy, but I certainly believe that it could happen like you're talking about. In Michelle's case, I've had times where I thought it was MPD and times where I thought it was DID from various things I'd read. She's been diagnosed as both back and forth a couple of times by different doctors. Right now I'm not completely sure if it's different identities that have been created to serve different purposes, or if it's sort of different parts of the same whole. At one point I was leading to the former, but in the past 6-8 months I'm heavily leaning towards the latter.

I've never had any indication she was doing any of this for any of those kinds of reasons, or that it had come from the sort of conditioning like what you're talking about. I'd read a lot about it up to that point and was very much looking out for that sort of thing as things progressed.

This was probably the best MPD/DID related question so far. Also I commented on the trauma issue above.

No problem. If you knew the kind of jokes her and I throw back and forth about it, you wouldn't feel bad at all.

Yes. I sort of hit it in my description of each, but a rough timeline is we meet early 2007, start dating mid 2007, move in together early 2008, her seizures start ~July 2008, Little Michelle first comes to the forefront and scares the crap out of me ~August 2008, she started therapy ~October 2008 (btw her therapist is a total milf), we move into my parents spare bedroom ~March 2008 (long story by itself), Rebecca first comes to the forefront ~July 2009 quickly followed by a ~10 day hospital stay, we get engaged December 2009, Michelle moves from my parents to her parents ~January 2010, Rebecca #2 first comes to the forefront ~February 2010, Matilda first comes to the forefront ~April 2010 and another hospital stay follows. I think I hit the highlights.

I feel you.

Not really. Yes.