How to Have Casual Sex Safely: STI Prevention, Testing, and Mental Wellbeing

The majority of people in the world like sex. There are many people in the world who enjoy it on a more casual basis than others. We’re not here to judge how many people you’ve slept with, our goal with this is help make sure that you’re keeping yourself and your partners as safe as possible in whatever kind of sex you’re having.

Physical Safety in Casual Sex: What You Actually Need to Know

There is nothing wrong with “sleeping around” so long as you’re honest about what you’re doing and everybody is consenting to the activities in question and respecting everybody’s risk profile. Maybe your risk profile is such that you don’t feel it’s necessary to wear a condom with casual partners, and that’s fine so long as the partner you’re with isn’t asking for one to be worn and you’re flat-out refusing to do so.

STI and Pregnancy Risk in Casual Encounters: Protection That Works

The biggest part of sexual safety is of course protecting yourself from STIs (Sexually Transmitted Infections) and unwanted pregnancies. In some cases, such as condems, you can use one method to help protect against both. What’s important to note here is that non-barrier types of birth control are not going to protect you from an STI. Using an IUD, the pill, the shot, or an implant won’t protect you from STIs. Condoms will help protect you from both STIs and pregnancy due to the manner in which it functions.

STIs are transmitted through mucus membrane and bodily fluid contact. Semen contacting the inside of a vagina could very well mean the transmission of an STI, or vaginal fluids making contact with the inside of the penis during sexual intercourse when everything is getting mixed together.

If we’re talking about anal sex, there is a much higher risk of transmitting STIs through seminal fluids because of the higher likelihood of tearing and abrasions during anal sex. Making use of a condom means that there is no skin-to-skin contact and no shared contact of mucus membranes.

As an important note, latex condoms are the safest and do a better job of protecting against pregnancy and infection than other materials such as lambskin. Lambskin does a good job protecting against pregnancy, but it isn’t as good at protecting against infections due to the porous nature of the material. Unless you have a latex allergy, it’s best to stick with latex to keep you and your partner safe.

A more recent tool in the arsenal of HIV prevention comes in the form of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis). It’s a set of anti-retroviral medications that you take regularly to protect against possible HIV infection. It’s recommended for those who have a higher risk factor, such as sex workers or those who tend to have many different sexual partners. Combined with condoms, and it becomes a very powerful tool in the fight against the growing AIDS epidemic.

How Often Should You Get STI Tested?

Another great way to keep you and your partners safe is to perform regular STI testing at your doctor’s office or a clinic. If you have many casual partners, making sure that you’re infection free helps you make good decisions about how things progress going forward. If you do find that you have acquired an STI, finding out as soon as possible means you can start treating it sooner meaning less risk to others.

While some STIs are curable, like chlamydia and gonorrhea, others such as herpes, genital warts, HIV, and hepatitis C do not have cures and must be managed through medications.

It is also of note that STIs such as herpes and genital warts have no tests available if there aren’t obvious symptoms to the infection. It is possible to carry herpes and genital warts without symptoms for years and pass them to other partners, so be sure to take that into consideration if you are having unprotected sex with anybody.

The more partners you have, the more frequently you should be tested.

If you’re a poly individual with a fairly fixed number of partners, every six months is probably a good idea. If you’re a sex worker that takes part in sexual activity with multiple partners a day, you probably want to be tested weekly, at least for infections like HIV and Hep C. If you’re having multiple different partners a week, then every month to two months is probably going to be the best option. While the CDC recommendations are less than what I’ve down here, I’m trying to look at risk factors for various groups and activities and err on the side of more caution.

Mental Health and Casual Sex: Why Protecting Your Peace Matters

Some people enjoy the freedom of having multiple partners and not feeling tied down to a single individual or even a regular cadre of partners. For others, this wouldn’t work at all and could end up causing emotional distress. Taking care of your mental health means that you’re taking care of your mental safety at the same time.

The idea of mental safety isn’t one that is often discussed. We talk about mental health and how we can use therapy and medications to help keep us mentally healthy, but we don’t tend to talk about what mental safety looks like. Perhaps the closest we come to discussing mental safety these days is the idea of protecting your peace. That is, in many ways, what mental safety can look like.

Sex workers are a strong example of a community that needs to take their mental safety into consideration on a daily basis. They live a life where they are both desired and reviled, sometimes by the same person within seconds. This kind of whiplash can wreck havoc on somebody’s mental health if they aren’t prepared to deal with it (and often, even if they are).

Making sure that you’re taking the time to protect your peace is instrumental in maintaining your mental health. Just existing in the world is exhausting in the world of today, so making sure that we have a good support system in place (people to talk to, a therapist, friends to lean on) is going to be the best defense against ongoing mental exhaustion and harm. Even if you feel like you don’t have anybody to turn to, there are multiple organizations around the world that can help you find somebody to talk to, often at little to no cost.

How to Track Your Sexual Health - and Why You Should

It can be difficult to remember birth control, STI prevention, and trying to keep track of all your partners without a system. That’s where the new app Play Safe comes into, well, play. Play Safe is an app that’s been designed to track your sexual health and wellness journey. Keep track of your test results, share them with others directly in the app or simply use it to show partners your most recent results. You can even link to partners so that your safety score is always kept up to date.

The great thing about Play Safe scope. You can set your risk tolerance in the app so that it’s helping you to the best of its ability whether you’re accepting greater risk or only minimal risk. It’s not just about keeping track of your test results, it allows you to keep track of you partners, who you had sex with and when, and can even provide insight on who you need to talk to should you ever end up with a positive test result.

Play Safe is a great app to help you stay on top of your sexual health and keep you and your partners as safe as possible.