Thanks NYCyndie for some down-to-earth, non-judgemental practical advice.
Neegola, this is one of the things that mystifies me regarding DADT - even if you're not telling you surely are telling in that your behaviour, demenour etc change?But i suppose everyone's different, and as I said earlier each ethically to their own
The small lesson I've learned is to get very very clear what kind of contact is or isn't possible after/while the sex is suspended. If I could go back i would spend at least an hour clarifying this and being very specific.... How private is your email? Do you consider maintaining a friendship with me while you're at home to be cheating? Would you feel uncomfortable with that? How much time do you and your partner have apart? etc etc. It didn't occur to me to ask and now its a little difficult - I don't want to communicate in code and I'm not even sure if the email address was given in that spirit. (The wonderful irony is that had we been actually cheating I probably would have thought about all of this!)
I spent a bit of time interrogating one or two people from OK cupid about their DADT arrangements, and one of the things that struck me again is how the person you are not asking and not telling about is often conceived of as either sub-or super-human in the way the arrangements are talked about - sub-human as in useable and discardable in defense of the core relationship, a kind of live sacrifice to keeping one partner sexually satisfied and therefore content in the relationship; or super-human as in expected to be able to just come into your life and leave it without emotional repercussions. (Of course the latter is possible when people are just not that into each other but otherwise a little unrealistic.) Being up front and honest is only a fraction of being ethical and humane.
Unlike many other people on this forum I do see DADT as a form of polyamory, even if it raises a million and ten questions for me (what happens if someone does tell?) It seems to me we have a real gap in thinking such things through in the poly 'community'. I guess it is up to the DADT folk to do the work but i wonder if there's any forums where such might be more vocal?