Kink, Clearly

In the past couple of years, I’ve been diagnosed as having ADHD, told I was most likely autistic, and I am now waiting for my full autism assessment. Looking back, it reframes a lot. Decades of masking and people-pleasing. Of learning, often instinctively, how to adjust myself to fit the space I was in.

Compartmentalisation didn’t arrive as a new skill. It was already there. For years, I have regularly compartmentalised which parts of my weirdness are seen by certain people in certain environments. The regularity doesn’t mean it’s easy. In fact, it’s fucking exhausting.

I take great comfort in clear lines. This goes here and that belongs there. Structure can feel like safety. It reduces noise and it makes things navigable. That said, I love spontaneity, too, but that’s a subject for another day.

Still, relationships are rarely neat, and clear lines are not always possible. I find myself in a loving relationship with someone who has a nesting partner. Their dynamic is, at times, difficult to navigate. It adds a layer of complexity that doesn’t sit easily within clean categories and can lead to complicated feelings.

I am also not used to being parallel with metamours. I have historically preferred more openness, more sense of shared understanding. This new way of relating feels narrower and more contained, more compartmentalised. I often feel the edges of that containment scratching at my core.

Let’s look at an example: there are spaces I share with my partner online where we do not declare our romantic relationship. On the surface, this is manageable. Practical, even. But recently, one space was shaped, subtly, but noticeably, by the presence and influence of their nesting partner. And something in me reacted to that.

Not angrily or loudly. But persistently, because it needed to be, from my perspective, a protected space. What might look like a simple boundary from the outside becomes something more layered internally. I felt, for a short while, unable to post in my normal way, to wonder if my posts (and those of my partner) were being scrutinized. This can stifle anyone, of course, but as a neurodivergent person this led to some dysregulation. Would I need to leave this space? Could I change my style of posting (not mentioning my partner – in friend mode – at all) and still feel comfortable to be there? Was this an example of where I might need to leave the platform? To block my metamour? These were tricky waters to navigate. Thankfully, the situation was resolved in a way that felt positive for myself, perhaps more difficult for my partner, but not necessarily positive at all for my metamour. I was left wondering if they felt some of what I often feel when parts of my life are compartmentalised when I don’t want them to be.

Masking

I have spent much of my life masking – adapting my tone, when what I want is just to be blunt and forthright. I’ve adjusted my responses and smoothed edges, and people-pleased for the sake of a little peace and quiet on the surface, being sadly left with roiling waters beneath the surface.

I think compartmentalisation within polyamory adds another layer to that. I think a lot about which parts of my life are allowed to exist in which spaces. There are people I love, or with whom I play, who cannot be named in certain conversations. There are experiences I cannot fully share depending on who is listening, even within my family.

I am not out as polyamorous to my dad. Only my mum and daughter know. None of my siblings do, yet. So I exist, in some part of my life, in partial form. This creates a particular kind of dissonance for me. That in some ways I am hiding, and in others, I am hidden.

I do not like feeling hidden. At times, it presses into something deeply uneasy – something that feels uncomfortably close to being a secret. Or worse, something that echoes narratives I do not want for myself. The sense of being a “side piece,” a tolerated presence, rather than a fully acknowledged partner. I know, rationally, that this is not the truth of the relationship. But feelings do not always follow logic. And, for someone who has experienced polyamory as something expansive, joyful, and openly integrated, this contraction and compartmentalisation on top of the more day-to-day compartmentalisation feels unfamiliar and unwelcome.

Staying With What Is

I don’t have a neat conclusion to this, only an awareness that two things can be true at once:

• This relationship is loving. 
• And this structure is sometimes hard for me.

I am not trying to dismantle any compartmentalisation. Not immediately or recklessly, and certainly not without input from everyone involved. But I pay attention to where and when the compartmentalisation makes me invisible, or less welcome/seen/heard. I am paying attention to the possibility of reshaping it to a configuration that works in positive ways for me as well as everyone else. As a neurodivergent (and historically people-pleasing) person, it’s all too easy to cave and cede to the structures other people put in place, but it’s important to realise that my (and your) voice is valid. My (and your) ideas for structure within and between relationships are valid. My (and your) means of compartmentalising do not always have to align for the sake of someone else. Because, if nothing else, I definitely don’t plan on drifting or disappearing at the edges of someone else’s world.