I'd like to frame this post by saying its purpose isn't to debate the boundaries other people have drawn for themselves. Instead, urged by u/tesstorch, the intention is to open up a space for people operating on either side of a DADT arrangement to talk about their feelings, needs, experiences and lessons learned. It's probably also worth saying that my personal preference would be to be fully and openly polyam - but, as I'm sure many people appreciate, that isn't where I find myself.

As someone currently operating in the unasked and unspoken, some challenges that have come up for me are:

• Sharing Excitement - I've gone on a journey of enormous personal growth as a result of my dynamic - I really want to share it with my partner! I want to share funny moments and happy moments and lessons learned and all of it with him.

• Secrets and Lies - I hate it. I hate it I hate it. I'm also bad at it, and I hate having to learn how to be good at it. In particular, in the very early days of play I was telling all my close friends about my new experiences. Now, as things have deepened with my Dom, I've had to allow my updates to trail off, or backpedal my enthusiasm and close that down because it feels disrespectful to my primary partner for everyone to know but him.

• Status - My Dom is also in a DADT arrangement and - whilst the symmetry of things certainly makes our dynamic easier - when things (especially polyam things, like his NRE with someone exciting) are hard, a tiny petty part of me is resentful of doing all the emotional labour of a strong and committed relationship with none of the public status. I'm proud of what we have built, yet he doesn't get to be mine, and I don't get to be his, not in any recognised sense.

I'd love to hear from others like me, as well as those who may have set that boundary for a partner, or those who've agreed on DADT mutually.