In my experience poly folks are way more ready and able to talk about this than mono folks. Regular testing and using barriers seems to be the baseline, while the nominally mono folks don’t deal with this because why should they, they’re monogamous!

Yup. 'Paperwork' is fine to talk about in the poly world, as is honest communication about how to work around it.

I've even had partners in the past with HSV1 or HSV2 and have tested negative for years after, because we were safe and worked around outbreaks.

Do people really use protection that often in the heat of the moment?

I'd say the primary use case would be sex work, outside of that I know a freakin ton of people who aren't slightly interested in missing out on the full experience.

> where at least one of you is regularly seeking out new partners

This isn't always the case. My sample is a bit biased as I rarely interact with cishet folks outside of work, but in my circle, quite a few nonmonogamous folks are quite stable with the 1-3 partners they have for years or decades at a time. As others point out, scheduling is a real limiter and unless you're just doing one-night-stands, it's easy to get "polysaturated" where, yeah, that boy looks cute but I don't have time for him. But what I can do, that I couldn't in a monogamous relationship, is come home and gush about the cute boy I flirted with.

Poly is for some just a scheduling fetish.

I’m not pretending the risk doesn’t exist. The data demonstrates the risk is low when safe sex is practiced. Practice safe sex and get tested often if you have multiple partners regularly.

I’m not talking about pretending the risk doesn’t exist. I’m talking about pretending the increase in risk doesn’t exist with

> poly only changes the honesty and logistics

Of all the monogamous people I know who have cheated on their partner, they are not practicing safe sex based on my inquires (but all have lucked out so far not getting pregnant or STD). I extrapolate out accordingly based on public STD health reporting and infidelity rates across the broader population.

The data shows monogamy is aspirational, from a sexual perspective. Poly folks are more intentional about safe sex, at least in my experience.

Of course, having no sex or being in a strictly monogamous relationship where you’re 100% positive no one is being unfaithful is the lowest risk activity. But with 40% of pregnancies unintended annually in the US, infidelity rates, STD stats reporting from state public health systems, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I am a scholar basing my thesis on the data.

(hard to take the monkey out of the human, we are simply fancy mammals)

> Of all the monogamous people I know who have cheated on their partner, they are not practicing safe sex based on my inquires

> I extrapolate out accordingly

> I am a scholar basing my thesis on the data.

Those statements are entirely contradictory. Your methodology is not even remotely in the vicinity of scholarly.

>The data shows monogamy is aspirational

If 75-90% of monogamous relationships are successfully monogamous, I’d hardly call that aspirational.

> But with 40% of pregnancies unintended annually

Without know how many of those are monogamous couples, that statistic is useless.

If you want to get pretty close to the actual risk difference, take a look at the difference in STD rates between single and married people. Even adjusting for age, race, and income, single people are astronomically more likely to contract STDs than married people.