For partners
Loving someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder is its own work, and it deserves its own home.
Systems Connect has two parallel sides. One is for systems, the people living with DID. The other is for the partners who love them. Both belong here. Neither side is more important. The work each side is doing is real, and very different.
What the partner side is for
This is a place to talk to other partners. To find someone who already understands the language of the small things: the silence after a switch, the question of which name fits this evening, the tenderness of being chosen by a system who could have chosen otherwise. To rest somewhere where you do not have to explain.
It is not a clinical service. We are not therapists. The crisis lines below are the ones designed to answer.
What you can do here as a partner
- Build your own profile, in your own voice. Choose your pronouns, your tagline, what you are open to talking about.
- Link with the system you love, when you both want to. The link is opt-in on each side. Either of you can end it at any time.
- Connect with other partners. Find people who already know the work.
- Read the research, including the Beach Safety Hierarchy, written by a partner for partners.
- Read Leading with Safety: A Husband's Guide to Loving a Wife with Dissociative Identity Disorder. The book is the long answer to the question many partners are afraid to ask.
If you are a partner who is also a system
You are not unusual. The site supports holding more than one role at the same time. You can join as a system or a partner and add the other later from your account page. Whichever you pick first does not lock you in.
Joining
The signup is the same as for the systems side. Pick "partner" when asked.