Short answer
An STI diagnosis treats a network, not a person.
Partners need simultaneous evaluation and treatment, sexual activity pauses until everyone completes therapy, and retesting confirms the cycle broke.
Skip partner care and reinfection is the norm, not bad luck. The organism simply commutes between untreated people.
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See Tests & Prices →Who needs evaluation, and why windows matter
Generally all sexual partners from recent weeks before symptoms or diagnosis (longer look-backs apply for syphilis and HIV given their latency).
Your clinician defines the exact window from your history. Notify everyone inside it, symptom-free or not, since most infected partners feel fine.
The look-back exists because transmission predates symptoms by weeks; notifying only recent partners misses the actual source window.
How to have these conversations is covered in How to Tell a Partner About an STI Diagnosis.
How notification works in practice
Patient referral (you tell them directly, fastest with cooperative ex-partners), provider referral (health-department staff notify discreetly without naming you), or medication handoff through expedited partner therapy where legal.
Choose the method that gets partners treated fastest and safely. In abusive situations, provider referral protects you, and no public-health goal overrides personal safety.
The legal landscape for medication handoff is detailed in Expedited Partner Therapy: US State Differences.
Abstinence timing both partners honor
No sexual activity until treatment completes AND symptoms fully resolve in everyone involved. With clinician-confirmed clearance as the endpoint, not calendar guessing.
Resuming early with a half-treated partner restarts everything, producing the classic “treatment didn’t work” story that was really a network left half-treated.
Retesting that confirms the cycle broke
Chlamydia and gonorrhea retesting a few months out catches reinfection (not failure); syphilis follows titer series over months; trichomoniasis retesting follows current guidance.
Keep every appointment even when feeling cured. The retest verifies the network, not just the individual.
Why infections sometimes seem to return is explained in Can an STI Return After Treatment?.
When to seek care
Immediately on diagnosis (bring partner information), urgently if a partner reports an STI, and on schedule for all retests.