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What Is DADT (Don't Ask, Don't Tell) in Non-Monogamy
DADT is an agreed-upon structure where partners consent, in advance, to not sharing the day-to-day details of what happens with other partners who, when, what specifically occurred. Both people know the arrangement exists. Both people have said yes to it. The not-knowing is the agreement, not a violation of one.
For some people, that's genuinely the healthiest structure available to them. Not everyone wants a play-by-play of their partner's other relationships, and forcing detail-sharing on someone who'd rather not have it isn't more honest it's just a different kind of discomfort.
The Part That Matters More Than the Definition
DADT has a hard boundary, and it's sexual health.
"Don't ask, don't tell" can reasonably cover who someone's seeing, where they went, what the date was like. It cannot reasonably cover whether someone got tested, when, for what, and what the results were. Those aren't relational logistics, they're physical safety information that affects every person in the network, whether they've met each other or not.
A lot of people build their DADT agreement without ever drawing this line explicitly, and then get blindsided later when they realize "we don't ask" quietly expanded to cover something it was never supposed to. If your agreement doesn't explicitly carve out testing status and protection practices as non-negotiable disclosures, that's not a small gap, that's the one thing DADT was never designed to hold.
A useful test, if you're building or already running a DADT agreement: could you explain, out loud, exactly what "don't ask" covers and exactly what it doesn't? If the honest answer is "I've never actually thought about where the line is," that's the conversation to have before anything else, not as a crisis, just as maintenance.
DADT Isn't a Shortcut Around Communication
When DADT is done well, it's actually a very specific, very deliberate form of it, you're just choosing what you communicate about, together, on purpose.
If you're not sure where your own line should sit, or you're realizing mid-relationship that it was never actually drawn, that's exactly the kind of thing worth thinking through before it becomes a bigger conversation than it needs to be. The Ethical Non-Monogamy Companion with Taylor K. Sparks, my private AI coaching companion, built on my own coaching methodology is a space to work that out before you bring it to your partner. 100% private. Nothing shared. Nothing stored. Nothing to download. Available in 10 languages.
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