When this man is skeptical, he aks Reddit:
Two weeks ago I broke up with my girlfriend (we are both twentysomethings) for reasons that aren't relevant to this post, but things had been going downhill for a while and we ended it as gently as possible. We didn't live together, but have been dating for around two years so we just went our separate ways.
Being lesbians in a small town, though, the venn diagram of our shared friends is a circle so we see each other all the time. We've seen each other on a few occasions since the breakup (mostly over zoom because we're in a few D&D campaigns together and, y'know, COVID) and things were different and kinda awkward but not uncomfortable.
But then something really weird happened. Last weekend a few of us went out to dinner for one of our mutual friends's birthday. It was me, my ex girlfriend (E), the birthday girl (R), and another friend who is closer to them than to me (K).
I arrived after everyone else because of work and when I got to the table everyone was quiet. I asked if everyone was okay, and they all looked at E, who made a kinda 'go on' gesture that was weird. She was also dressed really butch, which was also SUPER not like her given she'd spent the last few years that I'd known her in sun dresses and skirts. But whatever. I cut my hair after we broke up so maybe this was just part of her process.
I asked again what was wrong and K introduced me to E with a different, masculine name. Seeing this fall into place I asked if she was trans (which would make sense given how she pulled away from me before we broke up). E laughed and told me no, she isn't trans - she has dissociative identity disorder and I'm speaking to her 'protector'. I thought she was joking so I laughed, which made me an ass to everyone else who then told me it was serious and I needed to be supportive.
I tried to ask follow-up questions, like how long have you had this illness (since childhood, according to her), why did she never tell me (she didn't want to freak me out), and how did she keep this a secret for two years of dating plus the year before when we were just friends (apparently she can control when she changes personalities so I never saw??)
Every answer she gave me made me feel like she thought I was an idiot, and our other friends didn't say much. I ended up just getting through dinner and skipping the movie we had planned to see afterwards.
Since then I've tried to talk about this with other friends, who are either equally as confused/skeptical as me or are in full support of E. Honestly I planned to just avoid her after this because that was awkward as all get out but I found out recently she's been telling everyone on Snapchat that I don't believe her (true) and that I somehow caused/contributed to her mental illness???
I've made a few statements to friends that I had no idea but everyone is painting me as an ass because I'm skeptical of this. So tell me - am I the asshole for being skeptical?
passingthroughcus writes:
NTA - DID is a very, very hard disorder to dx, and even within the field of mental illness it’s controversial with a pretty even split between clinicians who believe it’s valid and it’s not. I spent my Master’s researching DID and it’s connection to social media/false presentations/malingering so I’m approaching this from a huge amount of info. In dnd terms, I would be metagaming.
The questions you asked are valid, and the information you gave regarding answers set off some flags that I would, in a clinical setting, further investigate. I personally feel the dx is valid overall (although I don’t know your ex and wouldn’t ever dx her as she is not my patient) and there are some persons that this happens to, but I also have personally encountered less than five actual cases in my research.
Anywho, you aren’t an asshole. I know being queer in a small town limits your social circle, but I’d stop socializing where E is at - simply because if she’s “fronting a protector”, she’s setting up that ‘E’ is terrified of you, and therefore might be causing further issues.
The fact that you had ppl share your messages with her indicates that my thoughts are somewhat correct. The info she gave you is straight out of the DID social media/blogging sphere and is clinically, demonstrably false. Biggest red flag is the idea of “controlling” who and what comes forward, when. That is 100% a sign of malingering and absolutely cannot be controlled in actual dissociation.
Let her tell her story. From what I’ve seen, people who use this dx typically fall out of it within a year because they can’t keep up with it. If ppl want to bring it up with you, tell them you won’t talk about it because she stated your thoughts contribute to her illness and you don’t want to harm her.
OP responds:
I hadn't even thought of that. I'll admit the last week of our relationship wasn't pretty because both of us were just done with the relationship, but I can't see why she'd be scared of me - especially because I work a TON and we never lived together so admittedly if she was genuinely scared of me she'd have an easy way out because I'm always busy and she has her own place.
nudibrand writes:
Boy I HATE Tik Tok and what it's done to people's ideas about mental disorders. I'm not against self-diagnosis at all (there are consequences to official diagnoses and assessments are expensive) but SO many people think they have severe disorders based on misinfo. In this case it sounds like she's deliberately faking it but I'm guessing she got the idea online.