How can you get a girl STI tested without being monogamous?

[ThePhoenix]

 
Blindfold her and take samples!  XD


Naw, Iʼm not that crazy!

Seriously, though. I donʼt plan on ever being monogamous. (See half‑way through this and elsewhere.)

But at once I donʼt want this to relegate my sex life to only ever being sterile, muted, condomed sex.

Obviously Iʼm not going to just go raw all over the place, but I do want to at least enjoy that experience occasionally. So, how can I go about it?

(Iʼm not asking how to get a girl to allow it; while Iʼve never tried yet, I suspect itʼs easier than it ought to be, lol!)

Of course I canʼt do it without accepting some degree of risk. The only actually safe way to go about it is to be in a monogamous relationship, get her tested, wait the maximum window period of any STI, then do tests again. And even then, itʼs only truly safe if she doesnʼt cheat — and devoting yourself to a woman and then expecting her not to cheat is like leaving all the doors and windows and the bird cage open and then wondering why the bird is gone.

I can tolerate some risk, but want to be smart about it. Iʼm getting the HPV vaccine, and have thought about PrEP (though my doctor advised against it). And I would of course not be doing it all the time or with a large number of partners.

Another useful measure in some cases might be to get a FwB to get an STI screening. Health-wise, this is not a guarantee, since (i) she could be in the acute stage of a recent viral infection, which may not appear on a screening and also is usually highly contagious, and (ii) sheʼs not obliged to be monogamous and so could still pick something up between the time of the screening and some future point at which youʼre still sleeping with her. But, itʼs better than nothing.

My problem with that idea is, just how do you go about getting a girl to do STI screening, without being monogamous with her? To me, STI screening would logically set an expectation of monogamy and thus a relationship frame. This is both very bad for your game and also unfair to her if you create an expectation and then break it.

Iʼm trying to figure out how youʼd put it. Obviously youʼd only do this after having sex with her at least once or twice. “Iʼd love to ditch the condoms, so letʼs go get tested. It doesnʼt mean weʼre monogamous, but at least we can feel a little bit safer with each other for a while.”

Hmmm... would that fly??

To make matters worse, Iʼm not sure if Iʼd really want to be tested for HSV‑2 (genital herpes). The combination of its wide prevalence, contagiousness, permanence (no cure and the body never clears it), social stigma, some moral obligation to tell partners about it, not being directly life threatening, and never producing symptoms in many individuals, really seems to make it one of those things that youʼre better off not knowing about!

If I was getting a screening for myself, Iʼd almost certainly insist that they donʼt test for HSV‑2. But how do you go about that when youʼre doing a mutual test? If you ask to exclude that, sheʼs going to think you must have it!!! You could try to explain why itʼs better not knowing, but Iʼm not convinced that would fly. Plus, it would be quite valuable to know if she has it!

Actually, maybe you could just go get them done individually (instead of walking into the clinic holding hands like in the sex ed videos, lol), and just share the reports afterwards. That way (i) you can exclude HSV from your own without drawing her attention to that fact, and (ii) since you havenʼt said anything to her about not testing HSV‑2, she might get hers checked, in which case you still get to see that.

Maybe Iʼm just being a worrywart!

Any ideas?

 

[Chase]

Phoenix-

"Hey babe. I like spending time with you. I think it'd be nice if we could let our guards down around each other a bit. I'd like to be able to feel you sometimes, and not have a condom between us. Let's get tested together so we can make sure none of us have something we don't know about. Then we can be a lot more free with each other and enjoy one another even more."

A little speech like that will usually do the trick

Chase

 

[ThePhoenix]

 
Hey Chase,

Perfect! Thank you!

Love how that emphasizes sensuality and being relaxed and chill — and free! — so you keep the lover frame.

Cheers,
Phoenix

 

[Space]

Phoenix-

The idea here is that she is/they are on the pill, do I understand it right? Which makes women more masculine, deepens their voice, makes them more interested in men with more feminine traits. Luckily I've already written about this in detail, so I can just point to what I wrote earlier.

Percentage of Girls from the Anglo countries (including the US, the UK, Australia, etc.) vs Continental European girls being on the pill by may be different. I haven't found conclusive data by a quick search, especially on the women of the age range most of our interest, although I've found some fun trivia.

If it were a choice between more feminine girls not on the pill but only a high end, feels like you wear nothing condom divides us while the other choice being raw dogging more masculine girls with deeper voices, I'd still opt for the former. We all have different preferences. Though I don't need to worry that much about choices like this, based on my location. High end condoms aren't the cheapest ones, though.

Japan is the country where the condom is the most popular method of contraception, while it's also the country producing the most advanced condoms. It's also a country with strong, traditional gender roles. That's interesting.

 

[ThePhoenix]

The idea here is that she is/they are on the pill, do I understand it right?

Not ideally. There are a few possibilities. (Assuming I donʼt want her pregnant, which is usually going to be true... lol)

If thereʼs to be forethought, typically an IUD is probably the best bet all around. (I havenʼt looked into it but I suspect theyʼre covered or mostly covered where I for now live.) More reliable, no chance of missed doses, and less bother and unpleasant side effects for her. Less or no hormonal effects — definitely none with the copper variety. Incidentally, the copper variety (not the hormonal one) can also be used as an emergency contraceptive with very high efficacy if inserted up to 5 days after sex.

With less forethought, the best bet (if you want direct contact) is probably one that most people donʼt think about: the contraceptive sponge. Unlike diaphragms and cervical caps, they donʼt need to be fitted to the woman and you can obtain them over the counter. In fact, I have some already! (Though havenʼt had occasion to try one quite yet.)

And of course thereʼs always the old stand‑by of withdrawal. Mind you, recent research suggests some percentage of men have live sperm in their pre‑ejaculate even without a recent ejaculation. So, youʼre probably best to either combine that with a sponge, or reserve it for women youʼre not completely adverse to knocking up... although the sponge (and even condoms!) have less-than-ideal efficacy, so thatʼs probably true of any single barrier/behavioural method.

I go into more detail with my findings on contraceptive efficacy in polygamous situations in this post. (And still more in some half-written drafts.)

Which makes women more masculine, deepens their voice, makes them more interested in men with more feminine traits.

Yeah, I heard about that quite a while back.

Interestingly, my type (black women) apparently have naturally somewhat higher testosterone, which is funny because in some ways theyʼre more feminine than other types. Arguably a little more aggressive and athletically built on average, though I think the difference when you subtract culture is probably fairly small... I like those traits, anyway. I havenʼt really noticed what birth control does to them but I seem to remember reading somewhere fewer of them use the pill, although that may have been an American study that wouldnʼt necessarily carry over to anywhere else.

Cheers,
Phoenix