Compartmentalizing Your Life

[BabyLex]

This is an excerpt from a discussion about an AB/DL who maintains two separate websites: one about their AB/DL lifestyle and another about the 'rest' of their life. At the request of another member, I've re-posted some of my original post here under it's own topic heading. It's a bit of a Lex-sure (I had to... or some else would have.) but you may find it a worthwhile read.

--

The AB/DL lifestyle isn't yet an entirely widely accepted mainstream thing yet. Many are very quiet and cautious about ensuring there is a sharp divide between their 'regular' lives and their 'AB/DL' lives. The thought of one's boss, co-worker, sports teammate, classmate, or band member knowing about this lifestyle is enough to scare most into wetting themselves. (which really is an interesting image isn't it?). Thus, many people remain anonymous and carefully hide their AB/DL identities and make posts, friends, and relationships within the AB/DL community without ever mingling them with the rest of their lives.

This is hardly unique to the AB/DL community, compartmentalizing one's life is a common human instinct, especially when one feels that members of two different groups will not work well together. Separating visits from the in-laws, remaining in the closet (gay) to one's family, or not introducing two friends with opposing political views are all ways one compartmentalizes their lives. It's a simple way to control situations and the interactions that can occur. It's also a method to shape and mould the rapport one has with different groups and individuals.

An interesting conundrum that many people face is this compartmentalization of their lives. The compartments are ways in which people can mould their identities and build reputations in given environments through consistent action and creating a persona that they wish to maintain as their identity.

Identity:

Every individual is a multifaceted person with many different personality nuances and characteristics that define them as unique. Those facets are what give people their sparkle and each one is a different part of their personality and is as important as the rest. Finding ways to celebrate and enjoy each facet can be difficult because the facets don't always line up in the same direction, and the audiences of those facets wouldn't necessarily be friendly to your whole person. This is often why people maintain different friends, activity groups, and do their best to stay well rounded. Each individual or group helps to highlight a different facet or set of facets of the individual. For instance you have a career and ambitions in your job however you also enjoy the AB/DL lifestyle. You may not want to let those two cross. (or you might depending)

Identity and Reputations:

While at work, church, the bar, ebay, dailydiapers, etc, everyone maintains a persona and builds a reputation around that persona as they participate in the social circle. On ebay it's measured in user feedback, at work it's based on your performance, etc. What you say, what you do, and what you claim about yourelf is part of your identity. Conversly what others say about you, claim about you, and believe about you is part of your identity. For example when you're asked for ID, you more than likely show your driver's license. As you participate you build a history within the environment and as you build history, and the history of what you claim about yourself and what others claim about you is documented in a way that's verifiable. Daily Di is using this method to verify people's ages to use the chat room.

Compartmentalization:

The compartmentalization of your life means that the reputations you build are separate and the pieces between them are not interchangable. For instance if you build a huge reputation on ebay but wish to do business elsewhere your ebay reputation is not portable. You'll have to start over. In some cases you'd like to share your reputation between environments and in other cases you're very happy to separate them. For instance having a secret about your AB/DL habits is seen as a 'good' thing. The ability to compartmentalize each piece of yourself and decide if/when you wish to share it is, up to you. Although, as I stated before, your identity is what you say about yourself and what others say about you. So if you drop pieces of your identity into a social circle you didn't mean to, and the information spreads, it's now a part of your identity in that cirlce. i.e. if one person finds out and tells others, they would all believe the original rumor and it would come to mind when people thought about who you are.

Integration:

Compartmentalization requires some mental overhead in terms of managing each compartment, and controlling what you say, how you say it and to whom you say it. The advantages are fine grained control with the flexibility to highlight and darken different facets of yourself to different people. The advantages to maintaining no compartmentalization is that one can simply live without the mental overhead of keeping separate lives/personas/reputations/etc. The disadvantages are that the chaos of collisions between compartments can occur, and those can have damaging effects on you and those you care about.

--

The ability to keep all the balls in the air while living within each individual ball of one's personality is an amazing challenge that does define one's unique personality. Being able to do that provides a certain sense of privacy while also providing the ability to live in multiple cirlces. The juggling analogy is a very good one. It's great that some people have been able to do this, and I can imagine that one becomes better at the keeping the balls in the air over time. In fact, taken to it's logical conclusion, as one improves the ability to compartmentalize they will be more able to keep a greater quantity of balls in the air, and juggle them to greater heights. It's an interesting approach to life, although it still requires the overhead of juggling.

As with most things, the binary answer of "on" or "off", "one" or "zero" isn't accurate enough to observe the variations within the spectrum of possibilities. Finding the details within the extremities is often where most people spend their lives. If one chooses to juggle fewer balls, they will have less to compartmentalize and fewer things to worry about crossing or integrating, if you juggle more balls the overhead increases on an exponential scale rather than a strictly linear one, each new ball increases the number of possible connections and overlaps by the number that was previously in the air. (so if you're juggling 2 balls, the possible number of connections between them is 1, but when you add a third ball into the act, there's now three possible connections that could exist, etc). Which leads to a complex web of integrations to keep separate. But I digress...

It's an interesting problem: How do you want to live your life? Do you want to do it in such a way that you can put on different personas like costumes to different groups/individuals in separate compartments, or do you want to live in such a way that you can have the same behaviors everywhere you go? The answer to that affects that next question which is "how do you do it?"

I had the unfortunate experience of attending a friend's funeral recently. He led a very compartmentalized life, in fact so much so that people who felt very close to him were completely unaware of many others that felt the same sense of closeness. Many people met for the first time at his funeral and learned that he lived very different lives with many different people. Although, when he died, and all of us got together, we all met, and while there could have been massive conflicts between the different groups, there wasn't... in fact everyone met and mourned together. Most of us sad, that we hadn't met each other sooner while our friend was still alive.

The worry about integrating different elements of one's compartmentalized life is that others will mock/laugh/disapprove/despise different facets of one's personality. This reaction can cause one to feel humiliated, can even lead to losing one's status in specific groups they very much enjoy due to the negative reactions of other's in the group. (Being gay and in the US Armed Forces, or gay and Christian are some examples.) It takes some rare people to show all your facets to, and to understand you for the whole of your identity.

Identity can be a strange thing that way. It's who you are, who and what you say you are, and who and what others say and believe you are. Defining that in any way that makes simple sense is a challenge.

Websites are mostly ways for you to tell others about yourself. Maintaining two (or more) separate ones is fine if you're inclined to remain good at compartmentalizing. Although it does define the rapport and context of your interactions with those in these cirlces. You also do have the option of revealing what you want to reveal on your AB/DL site over time as you choose.

True Goals:

Once one asks themselves: "What do I want to do?" one can define an end to pursue. When one answers "What am I willing to do to achieve what I want?" one defines the means that can be used to that end. When one asks the question "Why do I want this, and why are these these the means I'm willing to use" one begins the process of introspection. Introspection can help one learn more about their identity and natural state. What they truly desire, what they are afraid of, and in that more about who they are. Don't expect to arrive at a stateful conclusion anytime soon, but if you do, let me know ;-)

--BabyLex