You know if you had asked me five years ago about casual sex or having multiple partners. I would have stared at you blankly. If you had then told me, I would have a body count I can no longer tie a number to or even be bothered to try. I would have told you were out of your damn mind. To be young and clueless again. I don’t miss it. Well the young part, maybe I miss that, but not the clueless.
I must admit, before becoming a slut (and I own that term proudly) I was woefully under-educated in the department of STIs and testing. Don’t get me wrong I’ve had the birds and the bees talk in my teens. Even suffered through, what I now realize, was an almost flagrantly useless sex ed class. Neither of these did much to prepare me for the world of sex, and say nothing of gay sex.
What they did do was instill fear. Fear that if I had sex outside of marriage, it would be immoral and lead to me catching a venereal disease. Pleasant, right? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying hand a copy of the Kama Sutra to every tween and say good luck. Maybe instead we arm our young adults with the right information that allows them to keep themselves healthy. Instead of relying on the fear of God to see them through their horny teen & early adult years.
Through a combination of factors, including shyness, being in the closet, aforementioned educational entreaties, I managed to make it through my youth with relatively few sexual partners. Three to be exact (the third being my Fiance). For that I am in some ways grateful. While yes I did use protection. I knew only the general outlines of testing and sexual health. “Safe sex” only carries you so far. This of course has changed in recent years, with the opening up of my relationship.
From the beginning a key component in our agreement has been a proactive approach towards sexual health and testing. This was not only important for each other, but any of our sexual partners as well. Having multiple sex partners comes with inherent risk. We owed it to ourselves & our partners to do everything we could to minimize that risk on our end. Also, in the event of a positive result, be honest and communicative about said result.
Our sexual health regimen revolves around three core concepts: The use of PrEP, a regular testing schedule, & a calendar for tracking sexual encounters with partners outside the two of us. Doing this allowed us to create a system the mitigated some of the greater risks (i.e. HIV), while providing a way to minimize transmission of STIs & keeping past partners apprised of any positive STI results.
I will not spend a great deal of time here on the use of PrEP. Suffice it to say, for those who are sexually active with multiple partners, it behooves you to, at least, evaluate your risk level and determine if it’s the right choice for you.
What I would like to focus on is our testing regimen and calendar. These two pieces work in tandem to minimize the risk associated with STI transmission. When we first opened up our relationship we got tested every three months. As our number of partners grew, so did our chances of contracting an STI. Taking this into consideration we started getting testing monthly. It ensured a smaller chance of passing something on to one of our partners. This worked in partnership with the joint google calendar we had created for ourselves. By tracking our encounters on our shared calendar it allowed us to do two things:
One, it allowed us to see how wide a net we needed to cast in terms of informing partners of a positive STI result. Rather than having to guess at who we’d played with and when, we only need look at our calendar. Then we worked back towards our previous lab results. Doing so painted an accurate picture of who needed this information.
Second, in the event we were informed of a positive test result by one of our partners. We could track forward from that encounter who we needed to inform ourselves of a possible exposure. Thus allowing individuals the chance to make an informed decision about whether they needed to get tested.
As you can see the goal here isn’t to eliminate the risk. There is always inherent risk with multiple partners, but minimize it and act on information as quickly as possible.
For us this regimen has returned results time and again. Yes we have had STIs. Yes, we have had the unfortunate task of having to inform partners of those results. It is not a responsibility we take lightly or casually. However, they have the right to know and make informed decisions about their health. Unfortunately there is a lot of stigma and lack of education around STIs. This can and has led to a few intense conversations, to say the least. The only way to change that however (and reduce transmission rates in the process) is to have open communication and a proactive attitude towards one’s own sexual health.
- Poly Guy 1
