Hi there! Was wondering if maybe you could help me out
Context: I'm the core of a mediple system (essentially, we're a median system, but my headmates are quite distinct). Aside from myself, there's three other members (plus several fragments but that's unrelated.)
A friend recently 'came out' to us as a system. We've been chatting about system stuff and we've met some of his alters! It's really nice to meet other plural folk irl
But now I have a... dilemma.
One of my headmates now has a crush on one of my friend's alters. He's *constantly* thinking about her and it's strange for me since I've never been attracted to my friend this way, and I'm still not.
Any similar experience? Advice? This is just strange for me and I don't really know how to handle it lol
Hi! Having a crush on someone else is pretty normal for those who experience romantic attraction, and this is also true for individual headmates and alters in systems! We’re dating the whole of our partner system, but each of us have unique relationships with the other members of our wife’s system.
Perhaps you could have a conversation with your headmate who has the crush, to see what their feelings mean, what they’d hope to gain from pursuing a relationship, and how one headmate entering a relationship with an alter in another system might affect both of y’all’s entire systems, not just the two members involved!
We’ve heard some advice from other folks with DID that it’s usually not a good idea for one headmate to enter a relationship with someone else without the rest of the system being involved or at least on board. And while you know yourself and your system, and ultimately can decide if this advice is true for you, we think it’s sound advice and have to agree! Our relationship with our wife (both the paromancer and her paros) would be strained and difficult to navigate if only one paro was on board with having a relationship with one alter in our system. It would likely lead to other members feeling hurt or uncared for, and may also give rise to tricky situations if, say, an alter in our system wanted to pursue a relationship with someone outside our wife’s body.
Of course, each system member can have different relationships with the different members of each other’s system! Our littles view our wife as a buddy and caregiver rather than a romantic partner. We have asexual/aromantic members who view our wife’s system as their dearest friends, and are able to foster positive connections without being romantically or sexually involved. In our experience, working together to get all of our headmates introduced and comfortable with each other really helped bring us closer together, even if we aren’t all 100% romantically interested in each other. For my system, it would not have worked out at all if, say, Cecil was the only one interested in our wife’s system - even more so if he was only interested in Nevetien (one of our wife’s paros). Our system and our wife’s system could not happily make a relationship work like this.
That’s not to say that your system wouldn’t have more success than ours in this regard! We’re sure there are plenty of headmates out there who have relationships with individual headmates in other systems without having the rest of the system involved. We’re just personally apprehensive to this sort of arrangement, and know that it would leave other members of our system feeling unloved and left out. So having open, honest discussions first within your own system, and then maybe with this other system, could help y’all get on the same page and spark a new, exciting, and positive relationship.
So sorry if this advice isn’t helpful or not what you’d like to hear! We know that relationships can be complicated and difficult to navigate enough for singlets, let alone systems trying to make a sys4sys relationship work! But we definitely believe it’s possible, and we wish your whole system and this particular headmate especially the very best in figuring this out!
