Quote of the Day
We examined whether these outcomes differ between monogamous, consensually non-monogamous, and infidelity (i.e., non-consensually non-monogamous) relationships in a multinational online sample (Study 1; N = 888) and Finnish population-based data (Study 2; N = 10,503). In Study 1, women with multiple partners reported greater desire and satisfaction with their non-primary partners (vs. primary partners), and greater arousal with non-primary partners compared to monogamous women with their partners. Polyamorous individuals were more likely to have ever been tested for sexually transmitted infections but not more likely to have been diagnosed with one.
Michelle A. Larva et al.
Augst 18, 2026
Sexual Health in Monogamous and Non-Monogamous Relationships: Evidence From Convenience and Population-Based Samples – Michelle A. Larva, David L. Rodrigues, Annika Gunst, Patrick Jern, Sabina Nickull, Marie-Pier Larose, Markus J. Rantala, Justin K. Mogilski, 2026
I’ve been reading “non-monogamous people are no more likely to have STIs than monogamous people” for many years, and it still doesn’t really make sense to me. And to further bafflement, there have been numerous women who have told me they don’t use condoms most of the time even when having sex with five to ten different men in a single evening and go many years without contracting any sort of STI. What? Shouldn’t they be like the biological equivalent of an EPA Superfund site, have sores large enough to threaten the loss of their legs, and glow in the dark?
The literature hypothesis is that these people and their partners all get tested frequently and receive treatment quickly. I’m not convinced this explains it. My alternative hypothesis is that these people develop some sort of immunity from the frequent contact.
Also, and the literature doesn’t even expand on this for some reason, if the monogamous couples were really monogamous then their STI would be essentially zero. It is not exactly zero because some bacterial infections can be contracted non-sexually and then transmitted sexually. So, what does this mean? Many of the people who believe (or at least say) they are in monogamous relationship must not actually be in monogamous relationships, right?
—Many of the people who believe (or at least say) they are in monogamous relationship must not actually be in monogamous relationships, right?—
That’s my first takeaway. Somebody is lying.
Which gets awkward when the actually monogamous partner comes up with an STI.
I know at least one couple this happened to.
Within a year of them getting married.
They aren’t a couple anymore.
I hope she found someone who would treat her right.
No it’s either a race or a staring contest over who confronts who first, so as to look like the innocent one
A lighter version of what you’re talking about, from a children’s movie:
Minion: [scoffs] What happens when Roxanne finds out who you really are?
Megamind: She’ll never find out! That’s the point of “lying”.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Finland? Cherry-pick the starting data set much? How about sampling 1000 Stone Age tribe members in the Andaman Islands? Completely cut off from the remainder of the world.
How is STI defined in these studies? In most US public health studies both HIV and hepatitis are tracked as STIs but in many places the primary transmission vector is IV drug users and dirty needles.
In short, it appears that particular study may be useful for one particular socially responsible Nordic enclave, it probably does NOT provide a realistic model for much of the planet and humanity.
As for your theory of “immunity” due to frequent exposure? Please speak with an epidemiologist or clinical gynecologist regarding the MANY strains of various venereal diseases.
I sincerely hope all who participate have been thoroughly tested since their last encounter
What does Monogamous and non-monogamous actually mean in this report? Which respondents were put in which categories by the researchers? What conclusions can we draw from these definitions? How much confidence can we place in the conclusions given the distribution of the data based on those definitions?
These are the same questions that arose 75 years ago after Kinsey began publishing his “scientific” and “Accurate” and “Scientifically Accurate” so-called “findings” in his transformative, supposedly statistically accurate, conclusions in his two magnum opuses that transformed America into what we have today. Married meant living together more than six months, men and women in penitentiaries counted as the average suburbanites,
At least a semester of college counted as having attended college and received a degree. He included information from child molesters for his conclusions about child sexuality, and never revealed his sources, and, in the words of his assistant, Wardell Pomeroy, “Inadvertently” oversampled the gay subculture. The women who answered his as-yet-unreleased questionnaires were mainly prostitutes who cohabited with Pimps and Ponces. Also never revealed,
Abraham Maslow of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs read his first book when it was published, and concluded the conclusions do not follow from the data he revealed in the book.
Armageddon Rex is correct, these are “Cherry-Picked” data points with nothing to indicate to the readers what data and how they were derived and applied.
Kinsey did indeed do a very poor job in data collection. I have his books and read a lot of the criticisms of his work. My assessment is that about his only worthwhile contribution was making sex research publicly acceptable.
As for this study, I linked to the study so you can read it for yoursefl. That is all I know about it.
What are you talking about?!? Kinsey did a GREAT job of collecting data!!
Well, “great” for the purposes he was pushing. For honesty, not so much, but then, he clearly wasn’t interested in that.
It’s like saying “socialism doesn’t work” – depends on what the goal is, eh? It works well and reliably for certain things…. they’re just all horrible.
The STI conclusions agree with numerous studies done in the U.S. over the past decade or so.
Possibilities:
People lie. About all sorts of things. All sorts of ways. When dealing with relationship research, either / both / all partners involved might be lying or uninformed about their partner(s). Researchers with an agenda lie, too.
People can just be currently monogamous. Many people might “get some experience” and contract a STD while young, get it treated, then settle down in a strictly monogamous marriage. I’d expect that in this day and age, that’s much more the rule than the “chaste until marriage.” This would tend to lead to them “having been diagnosed” (at some point in time) at a similar rate, but would need research that looks at frequency of infection and when in life it happened to sort out.
A relatively small number of men, and women, act as “super spreaders” that skew the numbers in all sorts of bad ways, which many of the people involved with them are ashamed to talk about. It’s a fallen world.
Those are just the three most obvious that come to mind.