Join host Jason in this eye-opening episode of "That Other Lifestyle Podcast," as he navigates the complexities of STI testing within the world of ethical non-monogamy. This discussion, not safe for work and intended for adults, dives deep into the uncomfortable but vital topic of sexual health, challenging outdated sex education and confronting the awkwardness around STI conversations.
Jason draws from his personal experiences, recounting a flawed, fear-based education and emphasizing the importance of regular testing. He offers practical advice on the mechanics of STI testing and how to handle your results, aiming to normalize these essential health discussions within the lifestyle community.
Whether you're curious, seasoned in the lifestyle, or somewhere in between, this candid episode encourages listeners to prioritize their sexual health and embrace honest communication. By tackling the subject of STI testing head on, it empowers individuals to take control of their sexual well-being.
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Transcript
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are, I hope you have blue skies. Welcome to that other lifestyle podcast. I'm your host, Jason. Leave vanilla behind as we keep on talking about SDI testing. This podcast is for adults only. We'll be diving into adult and sexual topics with plenty of colorful language, so it's not safe for work. If you are under 18, this ain't the place for you either. This show is all about exploring the lifestyle and ethical non-monogamy, and it's open to everyone, no matter your background, gender identity, expression, or personal truth.
While I do my best to use inclusive language, you might hear terms like husband, wife, or partner for simplicity's sake. This show is for everyone, lifestyle, vanilla, or just the curious. Want to connect? You can send me an email to host at thatofthelifestyle.com. Visit my website at thatofthelifestyle.com and check out my favorite lifestyle product recommendations at bennable.com slash thatofthelifestyle. Everyone is welcome here because a lifestyle is so much more than you think. Last episode, I talked about testing. Broad overview.
This time around, I want to talk about the mechanics of testing, what to do with your results, and how to talk to others about their results. Spoiler, it's only awkward if you make it awkward. Double spoiler, I fucking love making conversations awkward. The mechanics of STI testing. If you're brand spanking new to the lifestyle, I am willing to bet you have never taken an STI test in your life. I had not. Before we made having sex with people we meet on the internet a hobby, I never took an STI test. Probably should have.
Growing up, I was subjected to the very shitty public education excuse for sex ed. Deep south of the United States, very conservative area, it was bad, not comprehensive, very abstinence-focused. The message was all sex until you were married is bad, so don't have sex. Once you're married, sex is only for making babies, so don't enjoy it. Allow me to paint a picture of my 7th grade experience with sex ed. 50 boys seated in a classroom. The girls from my class are in a different room somewhere. Yes, we had sex ed separately. You don't want those boys to learn about menstruation.
The day had finally arrived. Sex ed. A hush fell over the classroom as we took our seats. Fifty boys crammed into a poorly ventilated room, the air thick with a sense of sweat, fear, and whatever atrocities had been left to fester in the school's aging carpet and teenage boys' backpacks. The girls were nowhere to be seen, shuffled away to a separate room where their own secretive lesson awaited. What were they being told? What horrors were being whispered into their ears? We would never know. They were sworn to silence.
Before we could even learn about reproduction, our parents had to sign away their permission. Those unlucky souls with overprotective parents were exiled to the library, doomed to spend the period in shame, cast out like fragile little delicate relics, too pure to hear the truth. The teacher, a woman in her fifties who had long since abandoned the concept of hope, shuffled to the front of the classroom. She carried herself like a warden overseeing the damned. With a practiced sigh, she switched on the overhead projector.
A flickering beam of light illuminated the chalkboard, where two enormous line drawings loomed before us, a grotesquely large penis and an equally intimidating vagina. For a moment, we were entranced. Then the nervous giggles began to bubble up. Whack! She had a wooden stick that she snapped against the image of the penis. Everyone flinched. All right, she called out. Shout out all the names you boys know for this. It was an invitation to chaos. Tallywhacker, Chicken, Monkey, Pecker. We bellowed each name with a reckless abandon of youth, each one filthier than the last.
Dick, cock, one-eyed monster. Our teacher never reacted. She simply turned and pointed at the vagina. Now this one. There was hesitation, then a few timid voices, pussy, love tunnel, I think. But our list was much shorter, so much shorter than the penis list. Even in our ignorance, we understood that men's anatomy was talked about freely, but women, no, that was a secret, something more secret and forbidden. The laughter, though, ended when the next slide appeared. It was a shift so jarring, so viscerally horrifying, that even the most defiant among us fell silent.
I cannot fully describe what I saw. It was something diseased, something monstrous. The image was so grotesque, so unnatural, that it burned itself into my memory. Syphilis or gonorrhea, it didn't fucking matter. It was flesh-corrupted, decay-made visible, and the teacher had dozens more. One by one, she flipped through them, each image more grotesque than the last, festering sores, rotted tissue, a face twisted in agony, disfigured beyond recognition. The room was silent. No one breathed. And then came the final image, a gravestone, just a cold gray slab, a name carved into the surface.
This, she declared, her voice flat, is what happens when you get HIV. Death. That was a lesson. Not disease, not treatment, just death. And a brief aside, HIV and AIDS are not the death sentence they once were. There's treatment now. But 30 years ago, our teacher presented it as this grim inevitability of life. The final part of the lesson was a whole ritual of fear. Sex equals suffering. Premarital sex? Guaranteed infection. Condoms? Oh, they're fucking pointless. Kissing? Kissing was dangerous. The moment you veered from the righteous path of marital purity, you were fucking doomed.
By the end of the class, our routed group of adolescent boys, we had been broken. There were no more jokes. There was no laughter. We sat in silence, pale and hollow-eyed, as if we had stared into the abyss and seen our own doom reflected back at us. When the bell rang, we all drifted out of the classroom. Changed. The girls emerged from their lesson, just as quiet, just as disturbed. Something had been done to us. The boys now whispered that the girls, they all had diseases. For once in our life, cooties was defined, and we now knew it was herpes.
Girls hesitated to brush against boys' shoulders. The divide had been set, a chasm carved deep into our adolescent minds. Sex was not a natural act. It was a curse, a sickness, a punishment waiting to happen. This is what the fuck I was taught. And looking back, now that I have the clarity of adulthood, I can only think how deeply, profoundly fucked up this was. We were taught by the adults in our lives that STIs cannot be treated. If you catch an STI, it is a death sentence, which is complete bullshit.
I couldn't tell you if anyone shared the actual symptoms or treatments of STIs to me growing up. For instance, no one mentioned that syphilis, like the really bad side effects of syphilis, take 10 years to manifest. Or gonorrhea, on the spectrum of treatable STIs, again, not a fucking doctor here. But I will conjecture that gonorrhea being a bacterial infection, fairly easy to treat. It ain't pleasant. There's dripping and discharges, super unpleasant to deal with, but easy to treat. Two rounds of antibiotics, maybe a shot, boom, all gone. Did they tell us that? Fuck no.
Did anyone tell us that a lot of these STIs were treatable? Fuck no. I grew up in a time when HIV was a death sentence. Now, HIV is treatable. You can't cure it, but there are treatments. Certainly not a death sentence like it was 30 years ago. There was no discussion on how STIs are transmitted, how and what to do if you are exposed to contract something. There weren't huge gaps in our knowledge on safe sex. The only message I got growing up was that all sex is bad, there is no way to have safe sex, and you're a bad person if you have sex. Are you ready to party in paradise?
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Hindsight, I should have gotten tested. By the time I got to college, STI testing was more readily available, but it wasn't normalized. Getting tested was a secret shame you hid from people. No one talked about testing. No one talked about STIs for a fear that if you talked about them, then they're going to show up like a demented boogeyman and get you. Then I started dating my wife, and we were monogamous for 20 years. STIs never crossed our radar until we got into the lifestyle. And when we started, we fucked up. We did not take a test when we started. We took our first test a few months in.
If you are brand new to all this and you want to make the jump, go get a test first. I was so nervous for that first test. I didn't think I had anything. I had no physical reason to worry, but I still worried the first time we got our results. We were all clear. And despite taking a lot of STI tests over the years, I still get nervous when I open those results. I'm going to share what I can about STI testing. Keep in mind, I'm not a doctor. This is just my dumb, unmedical, uneducated experience with testing.
Yes, there may be variations on the procedure out there, and I'm going to cover what I can as clearly as I can. An STI panel, depending on what you're being tested for. Usually an STI panel will cover what's called the big five. Gonorrhea, chlamydia, HIV, syphilis, and the fifth one may either be hepatitis or HPV or trichominoosis. Can't say that word right. Depending on the test provider, the exact combination of what you are screened for may vary. And I do recommend getting a full panel that's like 10 things at least once a year.
An STI test usually consists of a blood test, a urine test, and maybe a swab. Blood test, which is done either through a finger stick for an at-home test through stdhero..com is offering something really cool as an alternative I'm going to talk about later. If you go to a lab or a doctor's office, it's going to be a proper blood draw. You will need to do a urine test. Some testing providers may ask that you provide your urine sample first thing in the morning, so the first pee of the day goes in the cup.
The next piece could be a swab, a cotton swab of the penis hole or the vagina or the anus or the throat. No, I'm not going to which component of your specimen is for which STI. Blood and pee, just remember that. Maybe a swab of some other bodily fluid. All those go into a magic machine that scans and analyzes them. None of these tests over the years, I have not found them to be very invasive. If you're the kind of person who is squeamish around blood and find the idea of doing a finger stick at home, I get it. Go to a lab where a professional can do it for you.
Again, I'm not a medical professional. Consult with a doctor. Do the right thing. Speaking of doctors, should you tell your doctor that you were in the lifestyle and engage in sex outside of marriage? Yes. Simple answer. Yes. Two people to always be honest with in the lifestyle, your spouse and your doctor. That's hard. I acknowledge it. I had to tell my doctor I wanted some Viagra. He asked me if I had issues getting hard, and I said no, but I don't want to be the only guy at the orgy without a hard-on. He gave me a puzzled look. I responded, yep, org.
He said, okay, made a note on my chart, and that was it. I have a good authority from doctors I know in the lifestyle, and I've asked them about this. Doctors don't give two shits what you do in your free time. Doctors need to know what you do in your free time so they can provide you the correct and adequate care. And you telling a doctor that you're a swinger, I promise, is the least shocking thing they will hear all day. They may see 10 patients a day, and none of them are going to have problems or issues that completely outshine your honesty.
Taking a step back, maybe you are vanilla friends with your doctor, and you're concerned that your honesty could impact your vanilla friendship with this person. There's other options. There's other ways to get tested. That should not stop you from getting tested. Oh, no, my doctor might find out and then tell everyone in town. Okay, do an at-home test, and then your doctor friend won't find out. Where do we go to get tested? How the fuck do we do this? There's three options I'm going to highlight. There may be more out there. We'll talk about these three.
First option, I mentioned at your doctor's office. You tell the doctor they order a test. They may do the specimen collection in their office or could send you to a secondary lab for collection. They may call you with results or the results could be available through some kind of online portal or app. Next option, number two, Go directly to a lab. A lot of labs will allow you to purchase your own STI panel online without a doctor's orders. You go to the lab for specimen collection, then you get the results. Third option is an at home test.
This is my personal preference for availability and ease. Where we live, the closest lab to collect a specimen is half an hour away, which means taking off work, driving over there, sitting, waiting, specimen collection, driving home. Time and effort here. At-home tests are the easiest for me. It may not be for you. I get it. You might live above a lab and your doctor is your neighbor. My point is that availability is no excuse to not being tested. Cost, though. Cost could be a barrier to getting tested. My thoughts on that in a little bit.
Listeners may have noted I started running a commercial for stdhero.com recently. They're partners of the show, and I like this company. I'm never sure how much weight my recommendations carry, but I like them. I wanted an STD partner for the show, STD testing partner for the show. STD testing and sexual wellness are very important topics to me. Like I said in the other episode, testing has been on my list of potential topics since I started this podcast. I now feel I'm ready to sufficiently tackle this topic. Thinking about doing an episode on testing, I wanted a partner to recommend.
I didn't want to go through this long rant and ramble about, oh, get tested, and then not be able to point you in a direction. That's jackass. Yes, your doctor is a perfectly good way to get tested. Yes, you can go to a lab. For those who can't swing those options, at-home testing is available. I know it is available because I know STD Hero offers the at-home option. STD Hero. What do they do and why did I partner with them? STD Hero offers multiple tests, including a dedicated oral HPV test. Do you know about oral HPV? It is real and a fucking concern.
I don't want to go way out into the weeds on the different STIs out there and their implications and symptoms and treatment, not for me. But oral HPV, that one is wild and you should go learn about it. STD Hero sent me their STD advanced test. This cost about $139, which is very comparable to the other STI at-home test that you pay for out of pocket. You can get, aha, you can get 10% off your order with the promo code TOL10. Please use my code. It helps out the show. This ain't about the money, though. I want people to get tested. I want people to be educated about testing.
Still use my code, though. I would appreciate it. The STD Hero STD Advanced Test, I received checks for chlamydia gonorrhea trichomoniasis all three of those words yeah they gave me fits trying to spell correctly and that's while i'm looking at them on the bag that the test comes in the test also checks for hiv and syphilis these tests are available on their website and at walmart if you're in the united states they also have the STD common test for $69, which is chlamydia, gonorrhea, and trichomoniasis, or TRIC for shorthand.
In addition, there's a separate HPV test, the oral HPV test that I mentioned, and a herpes test. What comes in the test kit? This is where it gets fun. Remember how I said that all these STI tests require blood and urine? Let's collect some. Urine collection is easy. You pee in the cup, you put pee in the cup symbol. The blood collection though, to STD Heroes credit, they have a really cool device for this. Other at-home tests that my wife and I have taken use a finger stick. You prick your finger with a needle.
I don't know what the technical term for the little piece of metal that I'm stabbing myself with is called. Then you squeeze the ever-loving shit out of your finger, trying to fill a tiny vial with your blood. It could take two minutes. It could take ten. It could take multiple fingers. It always leaves me with bruised fingertips. STD Hero has a different approach. They use a Tasso device, and I had to go get this explanation from the internet. The Tasso Plus is a single-use blood collection device designed to facilitate at-home blood sampling without the need for needles or finger pricks.
Users can easily attach the device to their upper arm, where it collects a small amount of capillary blood, typically within five minutes. This method aims to enhance patient comfort and convenience, making it particularly beneficial for those with needle phobia or challenging I don't know. amount of capillary blood, typically within five minutes. This method aims to enhance patient comfort and convenience, making it particularly beneficial for those with needle phobia or challenging venous access. Okay, honest truth here. It's this plastic device.
You peel off the backing and you place it on your upper arm. There's a little pinprick sensation and then it sucks the blood out of you like a vampire. I dig this. I like this a lot. No more sore fingers. It's a win. Their website is stdhero.com. Please use my promo code, pretty please. G-O-L-10 for 10% off your order. Okay. When you finished collecting your samples, you put them in a prepaid envelope and you mail it back. Results are sent to you via email and a web portal around 72 hours later. But Jason, what if I'm not in the United States? What if I'm in another country?
Well, thank you for listening, and I'm willing to bet you probably have similar options in your own country. You probably have an easier time getting these tests depending on where you are on the planet, because some countries have that sweet free medical care. I know there are local options for you, no matter where you are. It may take a little research, but I promise it is worth it. Worth it. That's a key word. The worth of these tests and spinning back to when I mentioned cost. The cost of testing can be a barrier. People in the lifestyle, being in the lifestyle, can be nearly free.
You don't have to pay for an adult dating site. You don't have to spend money on parties or outfits. You don't have to spend money on cruises or resorts. You can be a swinger on the cheap if you really want to. The one cost you need to account for and budget for though is testing. Depending on how active you and your spouse are, I recommend testing every three months. That means between two people, eight tests a year, eight times $139 is $1,112, not including taxes or random fees. See, I did the math for you. I used a calculator because fuck my fourth grade teacher.
I always got a calculator on me now, bitch. A thousand bucks a year is a lot of dollars. I know why couples may choose to do alternating tests to save money. I get it. You cannot put a cost on your sexual health. You cannot put a cost on peace of mind. We have a risky hobby. The cost of entry and continuing to enjoy this hobby is testing. Is there a way to decrease the cost at all? Maybe. If you were in the United States, Your health insurance may cover free STI testing. Maybe. Another option is free clinics that you could have in your area.
Doesn't fucking matter where you get the test done as long as you get it done. If you're lucky enough to live in one of those countries with that sweet free medical care, I have no idea how it works over there. Uh. Oh, shit. Oh, my God, oh, fuck, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, Oh! Fuck! Oh my god! Ah! Holy shit! Ah! Okay! I squirted. I'm sorry. As the chill of winter settles in and you cuddle by warm fires, drink hot cocoa, and snuggle with friends, it's time to dream of something warmer.
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Most companies, hospitals, doctors' offices have some sort of online portal that allows you to pull your results and show people. I recommend pro tip, taking screenshots of your results and keep that on your phone too. That way, if you're in a place without great internet, you still have your results on hand. Random question. Do I need to put my test results on my profile? No, I don't think so. It should be sufficient to say maybe in your profile text that test results are available upon request. Another random question. What about instant result test?
The options I talked about, the sample gets sent to a lab for testing and a couple of days later you get results. Yes, instant result STI tests do exist. They are pricey. If you want peace of mind immediately, you can get one if you can find one of these tests. Make sure whatever test you get is FDA approved or approved by your respective medical authority in whatever country you were listening to me right now. What about when should we get tested? Should we test before and after every encounter? Should we test after every encounter? Should we test immediately after every encounter?
Let's break all this down. You test as often as you feel comfortable and can afford. Can you afford to test before and after every encounter? Rock on. Testing after every encounter could be pricey depending on how active you are. Go into the internet and science to hopefully help on this. To paraphrase, the Centers for Disease Control in the U.S. provide guidelines for sexually transmitted infection testing based on individual risk factors and behaviors. There is no specific recommendation exclusively for swingers.
The CDC advises that those with multiple or anonymous sexual partners undergo STI screening more frequently. The CDC recommends testing every three to six months for individuals at increased risk, which include those with multiple sexual partners. So I'm sticking with my quarterly test recommendation. You do you. You test as often as you feel needed, with the minimum being every three months. One more random question. Do you need to test more frequently if you are more active? I don't know. It all depends on how you define active.
If you are fucking the same couple every weekend with the occasional new couple once or twice a quarter, I don't think that's very active. If you go on a cruise once a year, fuck one couple and be done until next year, I don't think that's very active. If you are engaging in 10 person orgies every weekend with 10 different people every time, I would first say that you're lucky. And then I would say, yeah, that's pretty active. Yeah, you should get tested more frequently, if for nothing else, to protect those other people that you are active with.
For the planned segue, how to talk to other couples and people about testing. So you did your test, you have your results. How do we find out if the other couple we are interested in has a clear STI panel? What questions do we ask? What the fuck do we need to do, Jason? We got this. How do you even bring this topic up? In the vanilla world, asking about someone's health is a super touchy subject. When do you bring this subject up? Do you run up to couples and ask about their status before their names?
Where in the sequence of events between meeting and fucking does this conversation happen or should it happen? I rattle off all these questions because I know someone out there with ADHD is thinking of all these questions. For newbies, yes, the conversation about testing is going to be awkward. It gets better with time, though. The reason I say it gets better with time is practice and your boundaries getting stronger. The first time you ask another couple about testing, you're going to stumble over your words.
You will have no idea how to gracefully compose a well-worded inquiry into their status. With practice, you will realize that the question, hey, y'all tested, is sufficient. Do not overcomplicate this. You do not have to offer any justification. You don't have to say, well, I wanted to check because your sexual health is important, and if it's not too much trouble, could we see your test results? Blah. No. Skip all that. This is a simple question. You tested? That's it. The other couple would then say yes or no. Talking about testing is a good segue into fuckery.
You are asking to see their test results because you are physically interested in this other couple. You are expressing your desire without really having to straight out say, I want to fuck you. If another couple ask about your testing status, yeah, they're interested in you. If the other couple says, yes, we're tested, usually that couple will volunteer to show you their results. They're going to pull out their phones, log into an app, and they're going to pull them up. If they don't volunteer to show you, you could say, well, we're tested as well. Let me pull out our results to show you.
This may create a sense of obligation from the other couple to show you their results. Do they have to show you their results? No. Let's get real for a minute. If you ask to see their results and they don't want to show you or they claim they can't show you, what are you going to do? You now have to make a decision on whether or not to proceed with this encounter. And this question and going through this scenario is awkward and it gets more awkward the less clothing you have on. It is best practice to ask about testing before you take your clothing off, before your horny brain takes over.
Standing in a hotel room with a Viagra-powered hard-on but naked is not the time to talk about testing results. It is better to clear the air about testing prior to this encounter. Talking about testing is not sexy, and it should not be a prelude to fucking. It is a requirement, not something you bring up while you wear face deep in a vagina. That is too late. Taking a step back in my narrative, you ask the other couple for the results and they provide them. They show you on their app that they're both clear and they were clear at the time of testing.
Take note how long it has been, though, since their last test. One month, three months, six months, a year. Realistically, it doesn't matter how long it has been since someone's test. A test is just a snapshot of their health at that moment. They could have tested a month ago and then attended nine orgies between then and now. This takes us into the testing-vetting process. You could read a lot into the age of a test or not. That is up to you and your spouse. Decide before you proceed with any couple, what are you and your spouse's parameters around testing?
If someone has a test that is six months old but claims they have not been active, is that sufficient for you and your spouse? If they test it last week, is that sufficient? I don't want to say good enough in this case because I feel good enough does not have the right connotation. Sexual health should never be put into terms of good enough. Sufficient is the right word. Is this other couple giving me sufficient evidence that they are clear they take sexual health seriously and they will respect my need to maintain our sexual health? That's a good takeaway for discussion and homework.
Ask your spouse about testing and their comfort level. This is such an unsexy topic, so do it while you're going down on them. Just bring up STI testing next time your husband goes down on you. Don't listen to me. You should totally do it. Whatever vetting process and testing parameters you and your spouse come up with, fucking stick to it. Figure out what you need to know to be comfortable with this situation and stick to it. Other couples, harsh to say, but it's true. And it has happened to us. Other nefarious couples may not have the same level of respect for sexual health as you do.
They may want you to bend your rules just for them because they're special, right? That dick he is offering to you is special. Not the same as all the other dicks out there. No. This is a special dick. Better example is condoms. Condoms are a simple and easy and readily available tool to help protect your sexual health. Are condoms foolproof? No. Are condoms 100% effective at stopping the transmission of all STIs? No, but they help. I would rather have 90% protection than 0% protection. This may be an unpopular opinion, but you should always use condoms.
Condoms provide protection for you and your spouse to address some of the myths I've heard about condoms. Condoms take away the fun. I hear this from men. They say, I can't feel anything. Bullshit. Condoms have come so far since you use the free ones from the health clinic in college. There are super thin condoms available and you will feel everything. I hear this one from guys too. I can't get hard with a condom. As my wife puts it so eloquently, not my fucking problem. She made sure I added this bit into the script. Not my fucking problem. Your dick doesn't want to work.
Guess we aren't having sex then. That should be every woman's reaction. If a man claims he can't wear a condom, I call bullshit. I have a penis. I can wear a condom without an issue. What the fuck is your malfunction? I can have a little grace on this, a tad bit. If you're a newbie, and like I said in the last episode, you haven't used him in 20 years, yes, it's going to be a different sensation that I promise you will get acclimated to quickly if you practice. Where I don't give grace is men who have been in the lifestyle for years and still claim their pecker doesn't work with a condom on.
No, dude, you have years of experience in this. What is actually happening here is this guy just doesn't want to wear a condom and is hoping that the gloriousness of his penis is so amazing that the other couple, they're going to take one look at it, the other wife's eyes will glaze over and she will be hypnotized into just raw-dogging it. If you as a couple have a rule of always condom, stick to your rule and don't wiggle because some random dude claims his pecker doesn't work.
I feel strongly about this because I've had to step in and be the bad guy and say, no, no condom, you are not proceeding with my wife, which, yeah, made me the bad guy in the moment because I shut everything down and walked away. But walking away from it, experiencing it a couple of times, I'm okay with being the bad guy in this situation. I say always condoms, yes, unless you are fluid bonded with another couple. Fluid bonding. Don't know if I've ever talked about this before. Fluid bonding means we share bodily fluids with each other. It is a fancy and nice term for raw dogging.
Really what it means for any couple or group of people, or even a monogamous couple. Basically no prophylaxis protection, like condoms or dental dams. Fluid bonding is a big fucking deal to forego protection willingly, intentionally deciding that yes, we will be fucking these other people without condoms or dental dams. Fluid bonding is a big fucking deal. To forego protection willingly, intentionally deciding that, yes, we will be fucking these other people without condoms or dental dams is a big fucking deal. And it's not just deciding to stop using condoms.
It is a conscious mutual agreement between four people or another person or any combination of people. It is an act that I feel should be reserved for those whom you have a special connection with, not randos you meet at a resort for a one-night stand. To make this work, there have to be clear boundaries, clear communications, and clear conditions. Everyone has to understand the implications of this decision. There have to be discussions on what about playing with other couples. If you and another couple forgo condoms, what about using them with other people?
If you and another couple that collectively the four of you decided we will not use condoms, are you going to use them with other people? Do you trust them to use condoms with other people? Will this be an exclusive arrangement where everyone forgoes fuckery with other people? Heavy considerations here that need to be respected if you elect a fluid bond with another couple. To me, condoms are a necessity, so to not use condoms is special and it should be respected. Unless you have a special arrangement with another couple that you trust wholly and totally, fucking yes, always wear condoms.
If you do have one of those special arrangements, those have to be built on total honesty. You have to be honest with the other couple about what you and your spouse are doing when they ain't around. Who are you with? Who are they with? The other couple may want you to get tested before there's any more raw dogging in the lifestyle. To all the listeners and the community at large, we need to normalize these conversations.
I run into members of this world that still carry this internalized shame about testing, when really you should shift the shame and put it into being proactive about protecting your sexual health. That is more important. Yeah, I still feel nervous about bringing up testing, and I am the guy sitting here telling everyone to talk about it more with a worldwide audience. I'm guilty of it too. I'm going to work on this, and I need you to work on it too. How do we normalize this awkward topic? By talking. By talking it out. By being open about it and showing our own vulnerability.
You go through all this effort to get tested. Be proud of showing it off. As you are crafting your personal sexual health plan, run through these questions with your spouse. What are you going to do when a couple shares their results with you? Share your own? What is the testing frequency you and your spouse are comfortable with and can't afford? What are your rules and boundaries around using protection? Next episode is going to be the hardest. What to do when you are exposed or contract an STI?
I appreciate hearing your feedback and comments on episodes or suggestions for topics, so feel free to reach out to me at host at thatotherlifestyle.com and go check out my website at thatotherlifestyle.com. My personal disclaimer, I am not a medical professional nor a trained and certified educator of any kind in any way. I am a guy with a microphone sharing my personal experiences with you. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only, and please join us for the next episode. Remember, STI testing is important, and it takes a community to make a difference.
Whatever you do today, I hope you have a fantastic time doing it. Know that you are appreciated and loved. Have a great day. Thank you.
