what are we to each other?

the title is referring to me (collective-me, and more specifically, the parts who have been around since august, which is to say, not the adults) and w.

it's something we've (by we i mean collective-me and w) been trying to figure out. it's one of the reasons we've been seeing couples' therapists. the plural in that is because the first two we saw didn't work out well. we'll see how the third one goes.

anyhow, i figured i might as well make a post about it, trying to figure it out.

if there were just one of me, and if it were one of the adult parts, or even if the adult parts were more present, the answer would be easy. the adults and w are partners. they have a romantic and sexual relationship that turned into a committed partnership. if it were just them, the answer would be easy. i don't know if the relationship would be easy, because from what i've observed, all relationships require a great deal of work, even in the absence of other issues.

but here's the thing. we younger parts definitely don't have a romantic or sexual relationship with w. for several months now, we've been sleeping in different rooms. (and let me tell you, that has made a huge improvement in our relationship, whatever it may be, because it reduced the degree to which we younger parts were getting triggered by being in a relationship with her!).

so we're not partners in the sense that most people would use that term, because it's not really a spouse-like relationship.

but it's not like we're strangers. w is the person i trust more than anyone else. it doesn't mean i trust her a LOT, it just means that i trust her more than anyone else. and i think that's true for pretty much everyone in the system.

when i was thinking about this earlier tonight, someone piped up that w is definitely *family*. which is true; family in the chosen sense, anyways. someone who is going to be there for me. someone who is an important part of my life. someone with whom i share a lot of history, with whom i live.

but it's still hard to work out our roles in this relationship.

i guess what i'm "supposed" to do is have the adults be the ones who are out more often, having a relationship with her, and the rest of us are supposed to... what? i don't know. i read the treatment guidelines for DID, and it seems to imply that it would be unhealthy for us to have a relationship with her separate from the adults in the system, that having w be anything other than the system's (the adults in the system's) partner is somehow unhealthy.

but that doesn't work. because the rest of us are inconveniently here. and we live with her and interact with her. she supports us financially. she supports us emotionally, and we try to do the same for her.

one thing that's been getting clearer to me is that i just don't quite understand how to be in an adult relationship. the adults seem to know this, but they have been blocked from coming out for six months now. and even though i (ellis, by the way) can do a lot of things the adults do, i really don't get how to be in an adult relationship. mature though i can act, developmentally, i'm only 15.

so it comes back to the question: what are we to each other? w isn't my partner, or the partner of any of us who have been around. she's not some random stranger. she's not really like a friend, although we are friends, kind of. the relationship is closer than that, and more... fraught with complications, i guess.

w has described it (and particularly these past few months) as being like what would happen if her partner all of a sudden had these kids she hadn't mentioned having before, and they all showed up on our doorstep, and moved in. and then her partner went away, leaving her with just the kids.

actually, that's kind of apt. although, looking back, w might have suspected something given that we were out buying toys on our second date!

but then, what is the relationship? i guess a lot of us inside here do kind of interact with her as though she were a stepparent. i mean, sometimes being friendly, sometimes being resentful, having this relationship that we can't quite understand or define, but knowing it exists.

i feel guilty that the adults haven't been around. not that i can figure out how to convince the others to let them back. they were getting close to doing that, and then all of these new parts started showing up, and things got really chaotic again. i feel guilty that i can't be her partner. and i feel guilty that i feel guilty for that, and i also understand that my guilt over that is tied to the degree to which i was expected to be my mother's partner when i was actually fifteen, and the anger and resentment i feel around that is about being triggered... but i do feel genuinely sorry that i can't just be the adult partner w needs. of course, in a lot of ways, what my mother wanted wasn't precisely an adult partner, which is probably why i was able to do the job back then. w seems to want more equality, and some indefinable (to me) adult-ness that the adults have, and that i just don't get.

anyhow, no great insight, but it's something i've really been thinking about. because maybe it would be easier to sort things out, if we could figure out what the relationship is in the first place.