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.
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.
