How often should you get tested if you're dating around?

"How often should I actually be doing this?"

You asked it while waving a postal kit at your flatmate, who shrugged, because she doesn't know either. Nobody does. There's a vague sense that "regularly" is the answer, and "regularly" means whatever you last did.

Here's the real answer, and then the version you can actually stick to.

The honest answer

Every time there's someone new.

That's it. That's the rule the clinics would give you if they were being direct. New person, new test. Not because he looks dodgy, but because you're changing the facts, and a test only describes the facts as they were when you did it.

If there's more than one person on the go, or things are moving faster than a test can keep up with, every three months. And once a year no matter what, even if your love life has been a desert.

The calendar version

Rules are lovely. Calendars are what actually happen. So here's how to make it real.

Dating around, more than one person? Order a kit every three months. Put it in your phone. "Kit" is fine as a reminder name, your mum won't ask.

One new person at a time, a few a year? Test a couple of weeks after each new one, before things get properly going. It sounds like a lot until you notice it's about as often as you buy new tights.

In something exclusive? Test at the start, both of you, then relax. If the exclusivity turns out to be more of a theory than a practice, start again.

Nothing going on? Once a year. Think of it as the boiler service.

Get tested as often as you'd be annoyed to find out you should have.

How soon after someone new

This is the bit nobody explains, and it's why "I got tested last week" can mean less than it sounds like.

Every infection has a window. That's the gap between catching something and a test being able to see it. Test inside the window and you'll get a negative that doesn't mean anything yet.

Roughly:

Chlamydia and gonorrhoea: two weeks. Test any earlier and you're jumping the gun.

HIV: about six to seven weeks on a lab blood test (the sort where you fill a little tube and post it). Twelve weeks on the finger-prick self-tests you do at home.

Syphilis: twelve weeks to be properly sure.

So if something happened on a Saturday, a kit two weeks later covers the common stuff, and a kit three months later covers everything. Most people do the two-week one and then fold the rest into their next regular test. That's fine. That's normal. Just don't treat a Monday-after test as the all-clear for anything.

Postal services will ask when you last had sex and tell you if you're testing too soon. Listen to them.

"But I've got no symptoms"

Right. Here's the thing about symptoms.

Chlamydia mostly doesn't have any. Gonorrhoea often doesn't either, especially in the throat. Early syphilis can be a painless little sore somewhere you'd never look. HIV, for years, is nothing at all.

So feeling fine tells you exactly one thing, which is that you feel fine. It's a mood, not a result. Most of the people walking around with something have no idea, which is precisely why the something keeps walking around.

None of that is meant to scare you. It's meant to take "I'd know" off the table as a reason not to bother.

How to make it painless

The reason people don't test regularly isn't that they don't care. It's that "book a clinic" sits in your to-do list next to "sort out pension" and never gets done.

So don't book a clinic. Order a kit. In the UK it's free through the post, arrives in a plain envelope, and takes ten minutes in your bathroom: a finger prick, a swab or a wee, sometimes all three. Post it back. Result by text within the week.

You can order the next one the day the result arrives. Set a reminder for three months and let future you be smug.

If you'd rather a clinic, they're free too, and some do results the same day. The post on how long results take covers both.

Why three months is the magic number

It's roughly what the clinics say for anyone with a bit of variety in their life. It's long enough to cover every window from whoever came before. And it's short enough that any given result is still describing the person you actually are.

It's also, not by accident, exactly how long a green tick lasts in the app. Test, upload, and your tick's good for ninety days. You get a nudge before it goes grey. Test again and it comes back.

Which means if you're dating around and you're keeping your tick alive, you're already testing as often as anyone would tell you to. The app just turned the boring reminder into something you actually want to keep.

Where to get tested, and a reminder built in.