Entry tags:
Linkdump of Noncorporeal Sexual/Romantic/Queerplatonic Relationships
Because I was looking up this stuff for ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bodyetal , figured I might as well dump this here! This is a big dump of all the sources I have offhand of people reporting their sexual, romantic, and queerplatonic relationships with noncorporeal beings, including headmates, alters, soulbonds, and spirits. Your mileage may vary on which of these "count" as plural, but since restricting plural talk to medical model and backlash stuff tends to pan out to being super racist, I'll choose being possibly irrelevant instead. I have organized them in chronological order. I have also included works of fiction where the authors have publicly stated it was based on their real life.
1562-1565: St. Theresa of Avila: “I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet was so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. […] It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God in His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.” (Teresa of Avila (1562-1565). The Life of Teresa of Jesus. Chapter XXIX; Part 17.) This is the origin of that super-horny statue by Bernini.
1577-1579: St. John of the Cross's "En Una Noche Obscura/Dark Night of the Soul," an ecstatic love poem depicting God as the Beloved.
"In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide, save that which burned in my
heart.
This light guided me
More surely than the light of noonday
To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me–
A place where none appeared."
1892-1902: Ida Craddock's relationship with her spirit husband Soph, which she writes about in her works, including "Heavenly Bridegrooms": "The angelic bridegroom, as well as his earthly partner, must live a correct moral life and think clearly; and this means that he must exercise a tenderness, a considerate regard for his wife's comfort and happiness, and also a marital self-control of which too many earthly men are ignorant." (See also: her Epilogue where she talks about her spirit guide, Iases, who is NOT her husband. Warning for era-expected racism, and also, Craddock did get arrested and harassed to death for this, so heads up.) (You can learn more about Craddock's spirit husband, Soph, in Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: The Essential Ida Craddock.)
1980: Ralph fuckin' Allison, who I am forever resentful about being my first reference to a medical multi banging their headmates. In his 1980 book, Minds In Many Pieces: the Spiritual Side of Multiple Personality Disorder, he describes treating a twenty-four year old multiple named Elise, only to meet a new headmate, Dennis. "Dennis wasn’t an alter-personality; he served no purpose, nor could I pin-point the time of his 'birth.' By his own admission, he remained with Elise only because he was sexually aroused by Shannon. Shannon was one of Elise’s alter-personalities, or so I thought at the time. [...] I was completely taken aback by this story. Here was a situation where one alter-personality fell in love with another. It simply didn’t seem possible, even within the confines of the bizarre world of MPD. Yet there was no other logical explanation for Dennis’s existence. Elise had never shown any Lesbian tendencies [...] I asked Dennis how he expected to have sex with Shannon, hoping my logic would upset him. He explained, however, that when Shannon was in charge of Elise’s body, Dennis would get inside whatever man she was dating. When Shannon went to bed with that man, Dennis would be inside him, enjoying the sensation. When Dennis finally went under, Shannon came out and complained about him. She confirmed everything he had said and reported that he liked to make his presence known by pinching her immediately after intercourse. Normally, none of the men she slept with pinched her. This occurred only when Dennis was inside a particular man. It was his calling card and she hated him for it." (168) True to form, Allison decides he's an evil spirit and exorcises him. Seriously, fuck Ralph Allison.
1982: Monni Adams's Designs for Life: Regarding Baule spirit lovers, "Each person is thought to have a partner of the opposite sex in the spirit world. If one is having difficulties, the diviner may blame one's spirit mate who feels neglected [...] if the client is able to afford it, he will commission a carving and placate the spirit by offerings to it. The spirit mate is given personal care by cleaning and rubbing with oil, food offerings are placed in tiny dishes before the figure." Mostly about African art design but does mention spirit marriage and possession in passing. We textually transcribed some of it, since otherwise this book is only available on paper (and is long out of print)
1988: Rabia Clarke's "Soul's Desire": A religious love poem from a Sufi magazine in Texas.
"No earthly love have I,
No caresses or welcoming arms.
"Aren't you lonely?" friends ask,
Seeing my solitude.
How does one speak of
The caresses of the Beloved?"
1992, June: A mention on page 12 of Many Voices "Self-Concepts and Exotic Alters" issue: "Sometimes when I touch my body, it's like touching someone else's. [...] It is that I am making love to another person. It's not a fantasy; I fantasize about people and definitely know the difference. This is actually sharing the interconnectiveness of feeling and emotion between two people. Now, the interesting part comes. Upon completion, there's only one body and a sense of loss with that. Knowing that two people were present, and one has faded, certainly causes one to ponder a moment." By Thom for Arien's Condo.
1993: Rene and Houlberg's "My Double Mystic Marriages to Two Goddesses of Love": "The reason I have become engaged with these spirits is because I have been persecuted since I was a little child in school. And I dreamed such a thing and refused to believe this kind of thing exist..." Haitian Vodou spirit marriage interview. I book-scanned it so you can read it free online, but not screenreadable, sorry.
1993 October: Many Voices "Sex and Relationships" issue: "Marianna and Chloe give me the love and respect I never received in the outside world, and the physicality of our relationship affirms our mutual existence for us in a way that words alone never could." This is the earliest record I have from MPD space of people banging their alters. It's not screenreadable, but Sneak transcribed the relevant bits into plaintext here.
2002: Laura Gilkey's "The Trinity": "I put my arms around him, feeling his warmth through his robes, and I rested my head on his gently solid shoulder, and we started to dance, slowly at first, like being rocked in a cradle, picking up into gentle, sweeping circles as the song built up to its circular rhythm. " The story is fiction, and Gilkey says so, but also adds on her personal website: "I wrote The Trinity years ago, probably 1998. That was back in the golden age of the JFW [Just For Writers, coiners of the soulbonding term]. Christine [the main character], as you may have guessed, is largely a self-portrait character, [...] Hotohori was my primary SB when I was writing this, and Seihara [love interest soulbond character] is essentially him with a different name."
2004: First public usage of the "in-house relationship" tag on the Livejournal multiplicity community (which has been backed-up on Dreamwidth). The tag seems to be used for all sorts of relationships between headmates, not just romantic or sexual, but this post is definitely loving towards a headmate named Sara!
2003?-2005: Nichole's Soulbonding Experiences Database: Reposted on Reddit. Information is all in the comments; ignore the top thread, though, it's unrelated and unpleasant. These are mostly female teen soulbonders, and a good few mention that they love or fell in love with their soulbonds.
2006: The Snapewives go big on Fandom Wank. (Warning: that's a mockery comm. They're being made fun of.) Nevertheless, for a long time they were THE most famous (or infamous) example of such relationships on the Internet. There's even an academic article about them, from 2014, Zoe Alderton's "‘Snapewives’ and ‘Snapeism’: A Fiction-Based Religion within the Harry Potter Fandom". I haven't read it, but it's on LibGen if you want.
2008: LB Lee's "This is Mac, This Is Rogan": Our first comic where we admit to having in-head relationships. Also our second comic ever. I had long since taken it down off healthymultiplicity.com because it's so old, but the script remains on the WaybackMachine. (And I went and reuploaded the comic to DeviantArt.) Basically every work of ours we make after this doesn't shy away from our relationship status.
2009: Howe et al's "Devotional Crossings: Sex Workers, Santisima Muerte, and Spiritual Solidarity in Guadalajara and San Francisco," from the book Religion at the Corner of Bliss and Nirvana. This article only has one relevant paragraph (it's overwhelmingly about general religious practices of some trans women sex workers who cross the California/Mexico border) and here it is: "Santisima Muerte is even, for some, a marrigeable partner. Vicky, a sex worker who had recently returned from San Francisco, explained that she had 'married' the Holy Death because the Holy Death had performed so many miracles for her. And, she further explained, she was not happy with men anymore. Vicky's marriage to the Holy Death appears to have altered the Church's usual domain by transforming the traditional marriage between a nun and Jesus to one of different, though related, intentions. Moreover, Vicky's marriage to the Holy Death is, from one perspective, a first 'lesbian' marriage between a human and a deity." (pg. 31)
2010: LB Lee's Questions (screenreadable version) and FTMPD (screenreadable version): A comic just covering some of the most common questions we got asked at the time (including rude questions about me and Mac's sex life), and a zine about being trans and multiple that covered Mac's and my wedding.
Later in '10: the Desired Constellation's Dyscalculia: "In a short period of time, he and I discovered that we had feelings for each other, both romantic and erotic. It had been there all along, but without a context to understand it, it couldn’t really go anywhere. But now, we began to fall in love." Autobio zine.
2012: Jack Dawkins of Plures's "In-System Relationships: Facts and Fiction": exactly what it sounds like.
2017: LB Lee's Alter Boys In Love. A book all about our in-head relationships. Sorry, not available for free, you have to buy it.
December '17: Meg-John Barker's Plural Selves zine mentions headmate sexuality and romance. (Warning: not screenreadable.)
2021: SoftAnnaLee's I Am Dog(s), by SoftAnnaLee: "the two of us embraced as if we hadn’t seen each other in years; and called each other our girlfriend." Quoth they on their Neocities site, "A semi-autobiographical twine story [...] Based on our journey of realizing that we are therian and plural." Twine game about finding out you're plural, therian, and lesbians for each other. Also strongly based off AnnaLee's real life. Free to play online. 2021.
2022: B and Z's Bee and Moth: "I am a bee, living with a moth. We live between two worlds—our inner world, where we interact with each other, and the outer world, where we interact with everyone else."Fiction, but B and Z told us that the characters' relationship was based off two of their headmates' own queerplatonic relationship. (Also available in Spanish.)
February '22: LB Lee's Multi, Orgasmic, which becomes our top seller of the year. Sorry, not available for free, you have to buy it.
October '22: Megan Rose's Spirit Marriage, by Megan Rose: "This is a love story—a love story disguised as a piece of scholarly research." Big book by a spirit marriage practitioner about her own marriage, history of the concept, and interviewing other people in spirit marriages. Not available for free; you have to buy it.
bodyetal , figured I might as well dump this here! This is a big dump of all the sources I have offhand of people reporting their sexual, romantic, and queerplatonic relationships with noncorporeal beings, including headmates, alters, soulbonds, and spirits. Your mileage may vary on which of these "count" as plural, but since restricting plural talk to medical model and backlash stuff tends to pan out to being super racist, I'll choose being possibly irrelevant instead. I have organized them in chronological order. I have also included works of fiction where the authors have publicly stated it was based on their real life.1562-1565: St. Theresa of Avila: “I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet was so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. […] It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God in His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.” (Teresa of Avila (1562-1565). The Life of Teresa of Jesus. Chapter XXIX; Part 17.) This is the origin of that super-horny statue by Bernini.
1577-1579: St. John of the Cross's "En Una Noche Obscura/Dark Night of the Soul," an ecstatic love poem depicting God as the Beloved.
"In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide, save that which burned in my
heart.
This light guided me
More surely than the light of noonday
To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me–
A place where none appeared."
1892-1902: Ida Craddock's relationship with her spirit husband Soph, which she writes about in her works, including "Heavenly Bridegrooms": "The angelic bridegroom, as well as his earthly partner, must live a correct moral life and think clearly; and this means that he must exercise a tenderness, a considerate regard for his wife's comfort and happiness, and also a marital self-control of which too many earthly men are ignorant." (See also: her Epilogue where she talks about her spirit guide, Iases, who is NOT her husband. Warning for era-expected racism, and also, Craddock did get arrested and harassed to death for this, so heads up.) (You can learn more about Craddock's spirit husband, Soph, in Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: The Essential Ida Craddock.)
1980: Ralph fuckin' Allison, who I am forever resentful about being my first reference to a medical multi banging their headmates. In his 1980 book, Minds In Many Pieces: the Spiritual Side of Multiple Personality Disorder, he describes treating a twenty-four year old multiple named Elise, only to meet a new headmate, Dennis. "Dennis wasn’t an alter-personality; he served no purpose, nor could I pin-point the time of his 'birth.' By his own admission, he remained with Elise only because he was sexually aroused by Shannon. Shannon was one of Elise’s alter-personalities, or so I thought at the time. [...] I was completely taken aback by this story. Here was a situation where one alter-personality fell in love with another. It simply didn’t seem possible, even within the confines of the bizarre world of MPD. Yet there was no other logical explanation for Dennis’s existence. Elise had never shown any Lesbian tendencies [...] I asked Dennis how he expected to have sex with Shannon, hoping my logic would upset him. He explained, however, that when Shannon was in charge of Elise’s body, Dennis would get inside whatever man she was dating. When Shannon went to bed with that man, Dennis would be inside him, enjoying the sensation. When Dennis finally went under, Shannon came out and complained about him. She confirmed everything he had said and reported that he liked to make his presence known by pinching her immediately after intercourse. Normally, none of the men she slept with pinched her. This occurred only when Dennis was inside a particular man. It was his calling card and she hated him for it." (168) True to form, Allison decides he's an evil spirit and exorcises him. Seriously, fuck Ralph Allison.
1982: Monni Adams's Designs for Life: Regarding Baule spirit lovers, "Each person is thought to have a partner of the opposite sex in the spirit world. If one is having difficulties, the diviner may blame one's spirit mate who feels neglected [...] if the client is able to afford it, he will commission a carving and placate the spirit by offerings to it. The spirit mate is given personal care by cleaning and rubbing with oil, food offerings are placed in tiny dishes before the figure." Mostly about African art design but does mention spirit marriage and possession in passing. We textually transcribed some of it, since otherwise this book is only available on paper (and is long out of print)
1988: Rabia Clarke's "Soul's Desire": A religious love poem from a Sufi magazine in Texas.
"No earthly love have I,
No caresses or welcoming arms.
"Aren't you lonely?" friends ask,
Seeing my solitude.
How does one speak of
The caresses of the Beloved?"
1992, June: A mention on page 12 of Many Voices "Self-Concepts and Exotic Alters" issue: "Sometimes when I touch my body, it's like touching someone else's. [...] It is that I am making love to another person. It's not a fantasy; I fantasize about people and definitely know the difference. This is actually sharing the interconnectiveness of feeling and emotion between two people. Now, the interesting part comes. Upon completion, there's only one body and a sense of loss with that. Knowing that two people were present, and one has faded, certainly causes one to ponder a moment." By Thom for Arien's Condo.
1993: Rene and Houlberg's "My Double Mystic Marriages to Two Goddesses of Love": "The reason I have become engaged with these spirits is because I have been persecuted since I was a little child in school. And I dreamed such a thing and refused to believe this kind of thing exist..." Haitian Vodou spirit marriage interview. I book-scanned it so you can read it free online, but not screenreadable, sorry.
1993 October: Many Voices "Sex and Relationships" issue: "Marianna and Chloe give me the love and respect I never received in the outside world, and the physicality of our relationship affirms our mutual existence for us in a way that words alone never could." This is the earliest record I have from MPD space of people banging their alters. It's not screenreadable, but Sneak transcribed the relevant bits into plaintext here.
2002: Laura Gilkey's "The Trinity": "I put my arms around him, feeling his warmth through his robes, and I rested my head on his gently solid shoulder, and we started to dance, slowly at first, like being rocked in a cradle, picking up into gentle, sweeping circles as the song built up to its circular rhythm. " The story is fiction, and Gilkey says so, but also adds on her personal website: "I wrote The Trinity years ago, probably 1998. That was back in the golden age of the JFW [Just For Writers, coiners of the soulbonding term]. Christine [the main character], as you may have guessed, is largely a self-portrait character, [...] Hotohori was my primary SB when I was writing this, and Seihara [love interest soulbond character] is essentially him with a different name."
2004: First public usage of the "in-house relationship" tag on the Livejournal multiplicity community (which has been backed-up on Dreamwidth). The tag seems to be used for all sorts of relationships between headmates, not just romantic or sexual, but this post is definitely loving towards a headmate named Sara!
2003?-2005: Nichole's Soulbonding Experiences Database: Reposted on Reddit. Information is all in the comments; ignore the top thread, though, it's unrelated and unpleasant. These are mostly female teen soulbonders, and a good few mention that they love or fell in love with their soulbonds.
2006: The Snapewives go big on Fandom Wank. (Warning: that's a mockery comm. They're being made fun of.) Nevertheless, for a long time they were THE most famous (or infamous) example of such relationships on the Internet. There's even an academic article about them, from 2014, Zoe Alderton's "‘Snapewives’ and ‘Snapeism’: A Fiction-Based Religion within the Harry Potter Fandom". I haven't read it, but it's on LibGen if you want.
2008: LB Lee's "This is Mac, This Is Rogan": Our first comic where we admit to having in-head relationships. Also our second comic ever. I had long since taken it down off healthymultiplicity.com because it's so old, but the script remains on the WaybackMachine. (And I went and reuploaded the comic to DeviantArt.) Basically every work of ours we make after this doesn't shy away from our relationship status.
2009: Howe et al's "Devotional Crossings: Sex Workers, Santisima Muerte, and Spiritual Solidarity in Guadalajara and San Francisco," from the book Religion at the Corner of Bliss and Nirvana. This article only has one relevant paragraph (it's overwhelmingly about general religious practices of some trans women sex workers who cross the California/Mexico border) and here it is: "Santisima Muerte is even, for some, a marrigeable partner. Vicky, a sex worker who had recently returned from San Francisco, explained that she had 'married' the Holy Death because the Holy Death had performed so many miracles for her. And, she further explained, she was not happy with men anymore. Vicky's marriage to the Holy Death appears to have altered the Church's usual domain by transforming the traditional marriage between a nun and Jesus to one of different, though related, intentions. Moreover, Vicky's marriage to the Holy Death is, from one perspective, a first 'lesbian' marriage between a human and a deity." (pg. 31)
2010: LB Lee's Questions (screenreadable version) and FTMPD (screenreadable version): A comic just covering some of the most common questions we got asked at the time (including rude questions about me and Mac's sex life), and a zine about being trans and multiple that covered Mac's and my wedding.
Later in '10: the Desired Constellation's Dyscalculia: "In a short period of time, he and I discovered that we had feelings for each other, both romantic and erotic. It had been there all along, but without a context to understand it, it couldn’t really go anywhere. But now, we began to fall in love." Autobio zine.
2012: Jack Dawkins of Plures's "In-System Relationships: Facts and Fiction": exactly what it sounds like.
2017: LB Lee's Alter Boys In Love. A book all about our in-head relationships. Sorry, not available for free, you have to buy it.
December '17: Meg-John Barker's Plural Selves zine mentions headmate sexuality and romance. (Warning: not screenreadable.)
2021: SoftAnnaLee's I Am Dog(s), by SoftAnnaLee: "the two of us embraced as if we hadn’t seen each other in years; and called each other our girlfriend." Quoth they on their Neocities site, "A semi-autobiographical twine story [...] Based on our journey of realizing that we are therian and plural." Twine game about finding out you're plural, therian, and lesbians for each other. Also strongly based off AnnaLee's real life. Free to play online. 2021.
2022: B and Z's Bee and Moth: "I am a bee, living with a moth. We live between two worlds—our inner world, where we interact with each other, and the outer world, where we interact with everyone else."Fiction, but B and Z told us that the characters' relationship was based off two of their headmates' own queerplatonic relationship. (Also available in Spanish.)
February '22: LB Lee's Multi, Orgasmic, which becomes our top seller of the year. Sorry, not available for free, you have to buy it.
October '22: Megan Rose's Spirit Marriage, by Megan Rose: "This is a love story—a love story disguised as a piece of scholarly research." Big book by a spirit marriage practitioner about her own marriage, history of the concept, and interviewing other people in spirit marriages. Not available for free; you have to buy it.