• @[email protected]
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          52 months ago

          Trust isn’t the issue. Probability is. Even without deception, there’s a chance someone can have an STD without knowing it. And there’s a chance that std won’t show up on testing due to incubation times, dormancy phases, and false negatives.

          Imagine there is a 1% chance of your partner having an STD without knowing it. 1% doesn’t sound too bad an odds. But if you have 50 partners in an extended polycule, then the chance that at least one of them unknowingly has one is 1-(.99)^50, or 39%. Probabilities compound.

    • @[email protected]
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      142 months ago

      Yep, this is exactly it. Practice safe sex, get on PrEP for HIV prevention, talk about testing and status with any potential sexual partners in or out of the polycule, and get tested every 3-6 months.

      • @[email protected]
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        32 months ago

        Yup! And if that’s too much of an ask, interrelationship dynamics are probably too much of a ask as well!

      • @[email protected]
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        82 months ago

        Yeah. My polycule is small but my friend is in a big multinational one. They have a google doc spreadsheet with STD results and sexual relationship tracking (fluid bonded, barriers, etc).