It is the reason that some of us are hiding again: physical or psychological aggression of the partner
…and we don’t want to spill the beans.
Dirty laundry is not easy to communicate to our friends and especially when our partner is really remorseful about roughing you up in a nonconsensual way (even tho it happened before), we are hesitant to spoil the image we present as a couple.
In the Kink Aware literature, this has come to be known as “the second closet”.
Maybe not a perfect name for you often see in the lives of gays and kinksters that our closet appears to have a revolving door. But it is happening to a lot of people that their silence is eating away on their self-worth and quality of life and it has a strong resemblance of the way you were closeted before… So maybe it is a great name for this phenomenon.
To be clear: we do not want to ‘out’ anyone, we just want to break the silence about this subject. Get people to talk about it and to prevent it where possible.
Maybe some of you want to tell their own experiences, maybe some of us would like to tell the things that happened to a friend (no names for privacy!). Maybe we can talk amongst each other how to start a conversation about bruises on a friend if you suspect they might be nonconsensual…
