Well, I can relate to some of what you wrote here. In terms of social life and friends, in teenage years we had 'an alter for every occasion'. Well, not literally, but it felt like that sometimes. We never fit in anywhere, but at the same time we fit in everywhere.
I think of high school life... we had a nerd who was besties with a disabled physics prodigy; a dropout who was friends with the 'losers'; a soft-spoken sensitive one who hung out with the high-achievers in the music department; a quiet lonely worker who excelled at school work; a delinquent who hung with the trouble makers and was always getting suspended and expelled... and the list goes on. Each alter was perfectly suited to their role, and accepted within their chosen peer group. Each group on its own was not a problem... the problems came when any group of friends overlapped with another one. In those instances we became very dissociative and switchy, which makes sense to me now. I need to note that at that time of life the front day-to-day alters had no awareness of each other at all.

But then I can also relate to what was written in the other thread, because later in life, when we became aware of our DID and developed co-consciousness, we experienced some of the problems associated with that. For instance (and this has happened many, many times) a switch might be triggered but because of coconsciousness we are aware it has happened - both the front one and the one that switched out are aware that the 'wrong' person is at the front. Both are also aware that if the one at the front is to speak or act in his or her typical way then the secret of DID may be revealed. In those instances we have sometimes had the front one deliberately 'act' like the original one to hide the switch, or we have been 'frozen' in some way while we fight to switch back. But we have definitely been caught off guard in ways that we have been fully aware of, and had to pretend or otherwise cover for the switch so as not to reveal / embarrass / shame ourselves.

I see them as two very different scenarios, based on the level of coconsciousness at the time. AL, since you have only ever had a very limited level of coconsciousness it makes perfect sense to me why you do not understand the challenges that come with that.

What are your thoughts?