The Price We Pay for Hiding: Why Visibility Matters in BDSM

Over the last five and a half years of running Infinite Devotion as a full-time business, I've witnessed something that deeply concerns me: how much the BDSM community lives in the shadows. There's a pervasive assumption that this is just the way it has to be, that shame and secrecy are inevitable parts of exploring dominance and submission.

But I'm here to tell you it doesn't have to be this way.

I've worked with countless people who carry a deep, visceral fear that their lives will be destroyed if anyone discovers this side of themselves. They're terrified of what might happen if their friends knew, if their family found out, if their coworkers discovered their interest in power exchange dynamics. So they hide. They compartmentalize. They build an entire dissociated part of their world around something they feel is real, important, and essential to who they are, and then they stick it away in a corner.

This creates a painful bifurcation in their lives. On one side, there's what they feel is their true self, who they really are when exploring dominance or submission. On the other side, there's the "good" version of themselves: the parent, the employee, the family member. Two separate identities, never allowed to touch.

Our Journey Out of the Shadows

When Dawn and I started exploring our dom/sub dynamic, it was just about the two of us. But when we began sharing our lives online, we weren't afraid to be seen for what we are. I remember in those early days, before we were even called Infinite Devotion, people would reach out to us with messages like, "Dawn is so brave for wearing her collar in public" or "I can't believe you talk about this and show your faces."

That's when I realized there was a massive gap between people's desires and any example showing them it was okay to live authentically, without shame or hiding.

Now, after over five years of putting ourselves out there on the internet as a couple living a 24/7 dom/sub marriage, after running this podcast for more than two years, I can tell you this truth: almost everything you're afraid of won't actually happen.

Sure, we've had moments of wondering if we should really do something, like when we started our OnlyFans. Should we put our faces out there? Should we attach this to our business that has our actual names? But the answer for us has always been: if we can't be ourselves, we're not going to do it.

The little bits of judgment, the slight fallout like losing a client who wasn't comfortable with our choices, these are minuscule compared to what we would have to sacrifice to hide ourselves.

The Real Cost of Hiding

Let me be clear about what hiding actually costs you.

Hiding Reinforces Shame

Every time you hide behind an anonymous username like "DaddyMaster78926" or a faceless profile, you might tell yourself you're being careful or protecting yourself. But what are you protecting yourself from?

When you hide, you reinforce the belief that who you are is dangerous, that who you are is bad, that who you are is wrong.

Yes, safety matters. Dawn and I have shared extensive information about ourselves, where we travel, what we do, and we've never had problems despite people warning us we're sharing too much. There's a difference between being safe and being small.

Hiding might protect you from judgment or rejection, but it also keeps you from being seen and known. Every time you bury yourself behind anonymity, you're telling your own subconscious that there's something to hide, that this part of you is bad or wrong or unworthy.

This becomes a feedback loop: the more you hide, the more shame you feel. The more shame you feel, the more you hide. Shame will never dissolve inside that loop. Shame dissolves in the light, not in the dark.

You're Hiding More Than Your Kink

It's not just your interest in kink that you're hiding. You're hiding something deeply true about who you are. You're hiding what you desire, what you ache for, the depth of connection this brings alive inside you. This is your capacity for intensity, what you need to fully access your soul.

You might tell yourself you're just hiding the fact that you're into kinky stuff, but you're also hiding the part of yourself that wants to feel fully alive.

I know this from personal experience. I spent the first eight years of my marriage to Dawn craving this type of relationship but never speaking up for it. I felt it had to stay tucked away, hidden. It wasn't okay, would never be acceptable, and I'd never actually be able to live this way. So I kept it down for decades.

Looking back at the anxiety I had before ever bringing this up to Dawn, and comparing it to now where I make my living teaching about dominance and submission, where we have a podcast listened to by tens of thousands monthly and content that reaches three to five million people per month, the contrast is stark. We've put ourselves out there completely, and we're okay. Better than okay. Our life has never been better.

Secrecy Is Self-Betrayal

When I talk with someone new who's considering working with us, I can usually tell when they've never actually said out loud to another human being what they want, what they ache for, what they crave. They've kept it stuffed that deep.

The excitement we feel around these relationship dynamics is powerful energy in our body, but our mind keeps saying: be careful, be safe, it's not okay, bad things will happen if anyone sees.

Here's the crazy part: we think we're protecting ourselves from something, but that something almost never happens. And if it does, in the course of living authentically, that's a price worth paying every single time.

The fear most people carry exaggerates the risk and minimizes the truth. Hiding is how fear stays in control.

The Energy Cost

Living in secrecy is expensive. Every bit of energy you pour into suppressing this real part of yourself is energy you could be using to actually live. You're burning yourself alive so nobody finds out something real about you.

When you turn that around, there's a multiplicative benefit: not only can you now live freely, but you're also no longer using all that energy to hold yourself down.

When you split yourself in two, with one version for the world and one for the truth, you're at war with yourself. You're always managing who knows what, what you can say in front of these people versus those people. You're guarding your body language, putting on a show for the whole world.

That tension doesn't go away even when you're not performing. You've taken it inside yourself.

You can't be fully authentic and hide at the same time. Embodiment and authenticity require exposure.

The Intimacy Problem

Here's a major cost: you can't have real intimacy without being seen, vulnerable, and open.

I see people all the time who want the deep intimacy and freedom Dawn and I experience, but they're trying to hide parts of themselves. They don't want anybody to know. Then they wonder why they feel unseen, why their relationships lack depth.

Even if your partner knows the truth about you, there's still a residue of secrecy if you're hiding from everyone else. That subtly communicates that this love, this passion you feel, is something you have to protect others from knowing. That message erodes your freedom and ability to feel fully authentic.

This doesn't mean you need to shove it down people's throats or walk around announcing your dynamic. It's about being comfortable in yourself. The internal feeling of needing to hide is what costs your soul.

When Dawn gets asked about her collar, she reads whether someone's coming with judgment or acceptance. To some people, she says it's an eternity necklace. To others, she says it's her collar as her husband's sub. You get to choose how to share yourself, but the key is internal freedom from fear of being found out.

The more we've owned and shared our lives through Instagram, Infinite Devotion, our courses, and this podcast, the deeper our connection has become. It's not about visibility itself. It's because there's nothing left to hide. We can be all of ourselves in whatever situation, in whatever way feels right in the moment.

The Integrity Factor

When your inner truth and outer life don't match, you lose integrity. You can't have peace without integrity.

Every little act of hiding chips away at your sense of wholeness. It's not just isolation, it's a slow death of trust in yourself. The moment you need to hide yourself to feel safe, you're already being controlled by fear, by public opinion, by your own internal shame.

Most judgment loses its power when you stop apologizing for being yourself. When you take ownership of who you are, what you like, what you want, and what your relationship is about, you become untouchable. Not because everyone agrees or approves, but because you no longer need them to.

The Cultural Impact

This conversation grows beyond personal fear. When we hide, we're teaching the world what to believe about these relationships.

Hiding Reinforces Collective Shame

Every individual act of hiding or suppressing your interest reinforces collective shame, misunderstanding, and stigma around BDSM. Authenticity isn't just about personal healing. It's cultural leadership. It's showing the world what's actually true about these relationship dynamics.

When you hide, you're not just protecting yourself. You're protecting the lie that this should be hidden. Through your actions and silence, you're saying: this thing I participate in is shameful, wrong, something that hurts people.

That's how stigma survives. Not because of what the outside world says, but because of what we keep agreeing to through our fear.

You're Judging Yourself for Others

Every time you say "I can't talk about this because of my job," you're teaching the world that BDSM is something worth losing your job over. If it wasn't, you wouldn't hide because of work.

Every time you say "I can't let my friends or family know," we're teaching them this is something bad and wrong that must be hidden.

You're expecting judgment from family, friends, partners, employers. So you shut down, judging yourself for them based on the assumption they would judge you.

Look at our culture: the amount of porn created and consumed, the erotic novels devoured (primarily by women), the fantasies people admit anonymously. This is all normal. But people act shocked when someone lives openly because there's a collective idea that everybody does it, but nobody talks about it.

That's the definition of hypocrisy. The only thing that breaks hypocrisy is visibility.

How Shame Feeds on Silence

The shame society feels around kink feeds on silence. Every time someone comes out of the shadows and speaks their truth, the spell breaks a little.

This whole journey for Dawn and me started when she posted a selfie of us on Instagram with the hashtag #collareddgirl. A gentleman from North Carolina messaged saying he showed it to his wife, who said Dawn was "so brave for wearing her collar out in public." This professional couple had a dom/sub dynamic they were exploring but were terrified of being seen.

Seeing us made them realize they weren't the only ones. That showed me there was something here. Everything we've built came from exposure, from being willing to be seen.

If you've ever wished people understood BDSM better, that it didn't carry so much stigma, understand this: the only way that changes is if more of us stop hiding.

Visibility as Protection

Here's where this gets really important: secrecy doesn't just hurt you. It creates cover for actual harm.

Secrecy Protects Predators

Think about what the mainstream world sees about dominance and submission. Usually it's when someone labeled a "dom" does abusive things and it makes the news, or when books and movies portray situations that are harmful and abusive, labeled as BDSM when they're not.

We hide all the good stuff, all the real stuff. So the only thing people see are those getting hurt by people using this lifestyle to do bad things.

If those of us who live this consensually, lovingly, ethically felt comfortable being ourselves, we would reeducate the world about what this really is. We'd also show bad actors for what they really are: abusive people using a loving, consensual dynamic to hurt others. We'd cast them out and remove their opportunity to operate in shadows.

Privacy vs. Secrecy

There's a difference between privacy and secrecy. Privacy is a boundary. Dawn and I keep certain things private even as much as we share. We don't talk about everything.

Privacy is a boundary. Secrecy is cover for shame.

What most people in the BDSM community call privacy is really shame in disguise. That shame doesn't just hurt you. It protects people who should be exposed.

The more we normalize hiding because of internalized shame, the more space we give to people who need darkness to operate manipulatively. Predators thrive where people are hiding because they can hide right along with you.

When everyone's afraid to be seen, when nobody shares faces or real names, no one can be held accountable. They can sneak through using the same language you use, like "discretion" or "privacy," but for entirely different reasons.

When we collectively accept faceless, shameful hiding as the norm, we create camouflage for bad actors. They blend right in. Our shame has built a culture that hides them.

Real consent requires visibility. It requires being able to name what's happening and who's involved.

Ethical Leadership Changes Culture

Every time we say this can't be public or no one can find out, we're saying it's okay for this to live in shadows. Shadows are exactly where the worst parts hide.

Ethical leadership is the healthiest way to shift culture. Not by policing it, but by illuminating it. When we show our faces, speak our names, normalize that this is consensual and loving, we show what integrity looks like.

When integrity and visibility become the norm, people hiding in shadows start to stand out. They lose their ability to hide because we've illuminated a culture that no longer gives them space.

Transparency and authenticity are the death of manipulation in this culture.

What Real Visibility Means

I'm not saying everyone must go public with their driver's license on FetLife. But check your motives. Is it really privacy for safety, or secrecy because of shame and fear? Are you protecting yourself or avoiding discomfort because you're afraid of judgment?

Visibility as Leadership

For those brave enough to be leaders with us in transforming how culture sees these relationships, this becomes something bigger. It's an act of service, integrity, and protection, especially for vulnerable people just getting started.

When we have a culture thriving on secrecy and someone new dips their toe in and gets bitten by a predator, what do they learn? That it's scary, not for them.

For those willing to be themselves, we can reframe being seen as the natural outcome of living truthfully. This isn't about attention. It's about choosing honesty and stop living fragmented lives.

It's showing this is a normal, loving, consensual way to relate, with nothing that needs hiding.

Courage Creates Safety

If you're waiting for safety before you can own what you are, you're looking at this backwards. Courage always precedes safety.

For those courageous enough to create a safe world for these dynamics, that's leadership. It's willingness to go first. When we show our faces, use our real names, we tell everyone watching: it can be safe to be who you are too.

There's real power in owning your story before anyone can weaponize it. If you're hiding and someone finds out and judges you, you've given them that power. You let them own your story.

When you speak your truth first, no one can use it against you. They might still judge you, but they don't get to define what it means. That's real freedom. You can stop living afraid of what might leak out because there's nothing left to hide.

People can only shame you for what you're hiding. You can't be exposed if there's nothing to expose.

The Path Forward

At the heart of this conversation is one simple truth: shame dies in the light. Every time one of us stops hiding, the world becomes a little freer. Stigma dissolves a little more.

That's how collective transformation happens. It's not about creating a movement. It's about being the change you want to see. If you want a world with less stigma and judgment, it starts with dissolving the judgment you have for yourself.

Bringing light to these dynamics doesn't mean everyone starts a podcast or posts photos online. It means those courageous enough to bring inner and outer worlds into integrity help create a world no longer organized by fear.

When you dissolve that split, you no longer decide who you're allowed to be based on how others might react. You get to stop performing, stop hiding. You just get to be yourself.

Yes, this requires courage to let people misunderstand you. But that's a place worth living. Let them misunderstand. Let them not get it. This isn't just about being seen. It's about devotion to truth, devotion to love.

It's about letting people know our life, our dynamic, who we are is real for us. It's an offering to the world. You can't offer something if you're still ashamed of it.

The Question to Sit With

What part of you is still hiding?

What's real about you that you've decided is too dangerous to let anyone know?

And what might happen, not to your reputation, but to your soul if you stopped apologizing for being yourself?

You can listen to this full episode (109) of Dom Sub Devotion anywhere you listen to podcasts, or visit infinitedevotion.com/podcasts/dom-sub-devotion or watch it on YouTube at https://youtu.be/oRath1rJMB8