A woman at the club has asked me to get tested for STIs before entering into an adult relationship (intimate). Some STIs can have an incubation period of up to three months, so even if I get tested now, there would still be a risk from the past three months. How do you all view this?

If that’s what he wants, I think you should get tested, show him the results, and move forward. I have no problem getting tested myself, but if someone told me right from the start that testing was mandatory, I’d feel put off and definitely fade out. No one’s ever said that to me, so I’ll keep it in mind for future reference.

The STIs that can’t be cured once contracted are HIV and herpes simplex, so I take the preventive medications Tafeno and valacyclovir every day. HIV prevention medication used to cost around ¥100,000 a month, but now that generics are available, it’s down to about ¥5,000 a month. Other STIs can be cured with treatment after testing positive, so I don’t take preventive medication for them. If you’re concerned, just get tested from time to time. And if a woman said that, I’d take it as a good opportunity to get a full panel of tests.

If she’s the one asking for it, then if you don’t want to break up, shouldn’t you just do as she says? Personally, I’d suggest something else. I couldn’t wait three months—I’d want to do it right away, lol. I use doxy-PEP to prevent the three major STIs. If a woman asks, I also give her antibiotics. *Please research it online and take responsibility for your own decision.* There’s also an HPV vaccine, so she can decide what she wants to do. If a woman told me to wait three months, I’d break things off. I’d suggest either quitting papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan) and getting married, or agreeing with her boyfriend not to see anyone else. I can’t help wondering if this might be a strategy to keep collecting an allowance through dinner-only (no intimacy) dates for three months.

You should really get tested. The other day, someone told me, “It’s been kind of itchy,” so I had her go to the doctor, and it turned out to be something like a yeast infection. I think her weakened immune system from malnutrition caused by an extreme diet may have played a part, too. Let’s build a relationship where we can talk openly about anything and stay safe while continuing papa-katsu.

The intent of the question seems a little unclear. If the woman is asking you to get tested for STIs before having an adult relationship (intimate), then it seems like you should simply take the test and tell her the results. That said, the incubation period and the window period for testing are different, so I think you should pay attention to the testing window. But if your argument is that testing is meaningless because there’s an incubation period and therefore you don’t need to get tested, that’s too much of a leap for me to agree with. If you’re thinking about it that carefully, you could get tested every month as a matter of routine. Then, regardless of the incubation period, you could at least say, “I get tested every month, so I’m more reliable than most people.” Of course, some people may say that even once a month is too infrequent. But considering that getting tested every day would be difficult and expensive, I think once a month is a reasonable compromise. This may have started with a woman asking you to get tested for STIs, but in a way, that suggests she’s more health-conscious than women who say nothing. She may actually be someone you can feel more comfortable with. If this prompts you to start getting tested every month, you won’t have to worry about questions like this in the future. Rather than nitpicking what she said, I’d like you to recognize that she has a valid point and think, “In that case, I’ll start getting tested every month from now on.”

Since you’re an adult, shouldn’t you take responsibility for your own choices? The only time I ever caught an STI was from unprotected sumata at a sex club I used to visit. After that, I started making sure to use condoms properly, and I haven’t caught anything since. I’ve never had an STI through Universe Club. Condoms offer a surprisingly high level of protection. Still, if you want to go without one, you need to accept the risk of catching something, regardless of whether testing is involved.