Boundaries Agreements and Safety

J

jsilas3

New member
35 year old male from the east coast new to non monogamy and discovering this with my partner. We have been discussing boundaries and making agreements about what we will and will not do with other partners. Primarily we are focusing on safety. We are interested in remaining fluid bonded and there fore use protection during penetrative sex and oral sex with other partners. I was about two hours away from leaving to go and have my first sexual interaction with someone who understands respects and is okay with my open relationship. My primary partner and I got into the conversation about kissing and she believes that I could potentially pass sti's onto her if I go kiss this new partner without a barrier. She is in turn concerned that she would then pass it onto her daughter by sharing forks, drinks etc.

Essentially my new partner may or may not have given somebody oral sex without a barrier. Then she kisses me, then the next day I kiss my primary partner, then my primary partner gets a potential sti passed from the person that my new partner had had oral sex with. I don't mean to make this confusing. I'm new to forums.

Subsequently, once I had shared that kissing was off the table, my new partner canceled the plans with me stating that she requires kissing to be aroused. Although I'm disappointed I'm certainly not upset. I am trying to find validity in the claim of unprotected kissing passing sti's to my primary partner. I find conflicting research and am interested in general opinions regarding this scenario.
 
Everyone is entitled to the degree of risk that they are willing to take with their own sexual health but "no unprotected kissing" seems a degree beyond the usual boundaries. :eek: Theoretically you can get herpes from a public toilet (or touching a door handle at your local McDonald's!) - but that really seems to delve into the germ-o-phobe region. Theoretically her daughter could get syphilis from kissing Great Aunt Martha whose ex-husband my have gone to a brothel in World War II...but it is unlikely!

More people die each year of the flu (which is much easier to catch and much harder to effectively treat) than syphilis (which requires intimate contact and is treatable with penicillin) but it doesn't carry the same stigma.:rolleyes: Likewise, strep throat gets passed around by kids willy-nilly and no one thinks twice, even though complications of strep can be devastating.

The difference between sexually transmitted infections and others is that STIs are actually harder to catch - requiring intimately close contact.
 
jsilas3 said:
I was about two hours away from leaving to go and have my first sexual interaction with someone who understands respects and is okay with my open relationship. My primary partner and I got into the conversation about kissing and she believes that I could potentially pass sti's onto her if I go kiss this new partner without a barrier. She is in turn concerned that she would then pass it onto her daughter by sharing forks, drinks etc.

Subsequently, once I had shared that kissing was off the table, my new partner canceled the plans with me stating that she requires kissing to be aroused.
Click to expand...


While theoretically you COULD catch and/or pass on an STI via kissing - in particular HSV - it is unlikely unless the other person is has an active lesion and/or you ALSO have close, intimate contact with another person, such as your existing partner, within a short time frame.

Unless you're unlucky enough to actually contract an STI, kissing your SO or having intimate contact with her the following day is highly unlikely to prove a problem. Most viruses will not survive for long outside the body, as I understand it, but then again I'm no scientist.

You state you and your primary partner are both new to poly and are in the process of setting ground rules/agreements about interactions with others, with an emphasis on personal safety/health. In general, this is a wise approach to take... however, like anything, "rules" about safety can be taken to unrealistic extremes that make interacting with another partner awkward/unnatural/unenjoyable.

For many people, including myself, deep kissing (French kissing) is one of the most intimate and "romantic" acts two people can engage in.

Are you SURE your existing partner's true and ONLY concern is her (and her daughter's) health? :confused: Because, being new to poly, it's possible that her focus on being "safe" might be some kind of subconscious attempt to limit or control your sexual interactions with a potential new partner, in order for her to feel more secure. And it's ALSO possible the person you were only hours away from going to see also viewed your SO's limit as a means of controlling her interaction with you, rather than a safety concern, and decided not to pursue a relationship with you for that reason as well as the reason she stated. However, I am simply surmising here.
 
When my husband and I were about a few months into polyamory, I figured out that he and I had had very different ideas about what “protected” sex was. I had never used barriers for oral sex before — including oral sex with him when we were first dating — so I was under the impression that “protected” referred to intercourse. Turned out he and his other partner used condoms, dental dams and/or latex gloves for any genital contact. I felt horrible that I hadn’t realized that we weren’t on the same page, came clean to him when I realized that we weren’t thinking the same thing, and we talked about what our new ideasaround barriers would be. We ended up seeing a sexual health educator together, who helped reassure my husband about the level of risks involved with unprotected oral sex.

It might be a good idea for you and your partner to see a professional together who can be a neutral and experienced third party to help you decide your level of risk together.
 
From my perspective, my primary partner is a little bit overly concerned about disease infections and viruses in general. Considering how new to this we are I am concerned that neither of us are completely aware of complexity of the emotional awareness we need to have.

I was incredible surprised to have the reaction I had when she slept with someone the first time last week. It was incredibly arousing and I was able to see a side of her I didn't know existed. It improved our sex and seemed to help our libidos match up. I do believe that she is not having the same response to me making the same plans. She seems to have a different emotional response than I had experienced personally and am glad I had not gone through with sleeping with somebody else before this conversation had started. It could have caused real problems disguised as "broken rules".

All of that said. I see two things that need to happen here.

1. I need talk to my partner and really try to understand if she is in fact overly concerned about safety or if the is actually uncomfortable with me kissing for another reason.

2. We should find a sex positive therapist to help us understand more about what we are doing.

It took me a long time and fighting through feelings of shame to finally decide that monogamy was a choice I had made that was not good and natural for me. I don't know if she is there yet.
 
Have you and your wife every been tested for HSV? It doesn't come in a standard STI screening. And many people get it in childhood. If you've never been tested you both might very well already have HSV1 and/or 2. I've never had an outbreak of either (that I've noticed) and I blood test positive for both.

Have you done your STI research?
 
STI screenings are expensive. (On my budget, anyway)

One company offers a $200 package and a more complete "10 Test Panel with HIV RNA Early Detection -- $349.00"

I'm quite far from being promiscuous, but it only takes one additional person to begin to complicate things. For maximum safety, any prospective partner and I both would have to run an expensive set of tests each and every time we added anyone else into the mix -- including one another. And, of course, we'd have to address trust issues here. Do we demand to see the "proof" on paper?

I've only been tested for HIV (I'm negative). I don't get the test regularly because I don't engage in high risk behaviors with regard to HIV.

I have no STD symptoms.

This stuff is complicated!
 
JaneOSmythe is correct in her risk assessment comments.

Having come from the swinging community to polyamory and having come from that community as one who almost never uses any kind of protection, I/we have done our research on our level of risk of contracting STI's. Only once in the past 3 years were my husband and I exposed and we both tested negative. In the 5 years my poly partner and his wife have been in the LS, they have been exposed 3 times but only needed to be treated once.

One of our LS friends is a pharmacist, another is a doctor. Both have told us that statistically, our chance of getting flu, strep, cold sores, colds and many other common illnesses is FAR more likely than our chance of getting an STI.

We do try and "vet" the people we play with, i.e: we do not play with strangers or people we just met. We have a small circle of friends and play within that circle. But....you have to have the boundaries you are comfortable with.

For me, I would miss kissing terribly. :(
 
Hello jsilas3,

The only rule I've heard of about kissing is that you shouldn't kiss when you have a cold sore. But, I am not an expert. I would suggest you take up the kissing question with your doctor. Also, do some reading/research on STI's in Wikipedia. It is a complex topic.

Regards,
Kevin T.
 
I appreciate all of the replies. There was alot for me to work with and low and behold the issue behind kissing is in fact an emotional security situation in our relationship.

She views kissing as something more intimate than sex and is not comfortable with me kissing other people because it is one step closer to my wanting to leave her for someone else.

There is clearly a major lack of security from her and I can take responsibility for not doing the best job reassuring her over the years that she is not disposable to me. There are deeper issues at play here that extend from far before our relationship together and it is really starting to spill out. Its an over flowing plethora of emotions that I don't understand and again assures me that her and I need a sex positive counselor to help us not only work together to decide if we are both ready for an open relationship.

I know I require non-monagomy in order to feel fulfilled in my relationships. She wants to continue her relationship with me so she is trying but I'm almost 90% sure she will not be okay with it. All very interesting to learn about and experience and it is bringing new meaning to life for me. I hope she experiences the same.
 
MsEmotional said:
We ended up seeing a sexual health educator together, who helped reassure my husband about the level of risks involved with unprotected oral sex.

It might be a good idea for you and your partner to see a professional together who can be a neutral and experienced third party to help you decide your level of risk together.
Click to expand...

This sounds like the smartest advice. No matter what you find on the internet, it will just be something you find on the internet. One way or the other, it's not realistic to expect your partner to trust her daughter's safety to anything you find online.

Many LGBTQ-focused clinics will offer free testing and will be more than happy to talk about safer sex.
 
In all practicality, your hope of finding someone who will have sex with you and not kiss you is limited.

There are some.

In about 14 of my partners, one would be okay with it. She got kinda claudtrophobic

One other was okay with it as a temporary practical restriction when I had taken on risk that was outside his and his partner’s level- and kissing but not sex was off the table until I got tested and results, and it was weird but interesting sex .

But I’m not sure many would be okay with it because of the imposed control because of lack of security. I think both of my partners would nope out of that fast if asked for that reason.
 
It is ALWAyS within your partner’s rights to say “I’m not comfortable kissing someone who kissed someone else. But they need to limit it with themselves- be willing to not kiss you.

To be honest, I was concerned about kissing when I first started poly. But both partners noped out of being restricted that way. They were willing to forgo it with me— and that helped me put risks into a ritual perspective and deal with Keats.

One thing that helped me was the charts in the book “opening up”, I believe. That show ACTUAL risk from each act.

Fact— 80 of people carry HSV1. 1 in 6 HSV 2. It passes on at a slower rate than that. If you and your established partner haven’t been tested, your partner is more at risk from you than from a third party. And her daughter at more risk from her than you. If she is worried— she shoudn’t share utensils.
 
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