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It always pays to use caution when dating, especially if you hope that coming in for a cup of coffee after a date means something other than coffee. It turns out the Land of Enchantment might be one of the safest places in the nation to swipe right.
A new sexual wellness study rated New Mexico seventh-best in a ranking of states with the safest sex practices.
The study is not about using a safety word in the bedroom, or which state has the hotels with the most secure or discreet lodgings.The criteria for the study looked at which states’ residents take the most precautions before becoming more than friends.
Sexual wellness platform Bedbible looked at five different metrics to create an index rating out of 100. The metrics were:
- Rates of chlamydia per 100,000 people
- Rates of gonorrhea per 100,000 people
- Rates of syphilis per 100,000 people
- Number of sexual health clinics per 100,000 residents
- Google searches for safety measures (including key phrases such as “contraception”, “safe sex tips” and “condoms”) per 100,000 people
The measures were assessed and ranked to give the states a score out of 100, where the higher the score, the safer the sex practices.
The study found Vermont is the safest state to take your relationship to the next level with a score of 72.2 out of 100, much higher than the nation’s average score of 40.5. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Vermont has the lowest rate of chlamydia cases per 100,000 residents in the U.S., at 197, and has three clinics per 100,000 people.
New Mexicans may want to keep their long-distance romance long-distance if their squeeze is from South Dakota, the state that came in last with a score of 11.2. The study found above-average cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis, with just over one clinic per 100,000 people.
New Mexico has a high number of sexual health clinics per population, at 5.3 per 100,000 people but sexually transmitted infection rates for chlamydia are above average at 528 cases reported per 100,000 according to the study.