Here is a question for all of you ethically non-monogamous peeps. What do you all think about, but most of you are not comfortable talking about? Well, if you answered sexually transmitted infections (and COVID-19 – and yes COVID could be considered an STI) of course you guessed correctly.
If you are reading this blog, you may be old enough to remember that the disease we all used to be worried about was herpes. Then came AIDS. Now that really gave us something to really worry about! Now it’s Covid.
Now that we are talking about STI’s let’s pause and ask ourselves a bunch of questions. Have we ever been tested for STI’s? If you answered no, then ask yourself why not? If you answered yes, do you test on a regular basis or only after you are afraid that you have been exposed to an infected person? Many folks have reduced play because of Covid so have you gotten vaccinated? Would you play with a non-vaccinated person? If you knew someone has herpes, but does not have any sores, would you play with them? Along that line if you knew someone had HPV would you play with them? Do you ever discuss STI’s and testing with your play partners? These are all questions that raise some level of discomfort … how do you deal with them?
We are all adults here, so we aren’t going to give you advice or worse, lecture you. But we’d like to share with you a bit about how we handle these issues. We both get tested on a regular basis. One of us gets tested every three months, so we both get tested every six months but on an alternating schedule. Since we are sexually active with each other we figure that if one of us has picked up something then other is almost certainly infected too. So in our minds that is enough though we do know couples who get tested more frequently. We do work on our overall health … eat and sleep well, drink alcohol in moderation and don’t exercise enough. We know, we know, we are working on that …
We have been fully vaccinated for Covid and are slowly coming out of our pandemic hibernation. Our big “coming out” will be at Desire with friends over the July 4th weekend. That is if Quintana Roo doesn’t go into lock-down again.
We have heard on some podcasts that folks have an “elevator speech” on their STI and testing status. We don’t nor have we yet met anyone who has one or at least tried it on us. But we have discussed STI’s, testing and Covid vaccines with friends and if asked, we are more than happy to volunteer our “status.”
Though we said we are not going to give you advice we are going back on that with one bit, think about these questions and be comfortable with the answers that you give yourselves. But if you are sexually active outside of your primary relationship, get yourselves tested. Oh, and get “the vaccine.”
XOXO,
Donna & Alex