It can be tough to rekindle any bedroom passion after such questions come up.

Two recent developments could make these conversations less awkward, or even render them moot. But they also raise troubling questions about promiscuity and responsibility that are reminiscent of debates from the 1980s.

The first development was the approval, last summer, by the Food and Drug Administration of an over-the-counter rapid-response at-home H.I.V. test kit. The test, called OraQuick and available nationwide since October, gives results 20 minutes after an upper and lower gum swab. The second is the increasing availability of PEP and of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.

PEP — the medication I am taking — has been called the H.I.V. morning-after pill, and PrEP, to follow the analogy, is akin to birth control. A study in the British medical journal The Lancet this month found that drug-injecting addicts who took PrEP were half as likely to become infected with H.I.V. as those who did not; other studies have shown that the drug reduces transmission of the virus from mother to child, and transmission among both gay men and heterosexuals.

The at-home OraQuick tests, at $39.99 a pop, are a bigger phenomenon than drugs like Truvada, which can be used as either a pre-exposure or a post-exposure prophylaxis, and can cost more than $10,000 a year.

A study by Columbia University researchers, published last year in the journal AIDS and Behavior, found that the at-home tests could be effective if widely used. It gave at-home testing kits to 27 gay men who reported having routine unprotected sex. Over three months, the 27 men had a collective total of 140 sexual partners; 124 of them were asked to submit to testing before sex, and 101 agreed. Of the 101, 10 tested positive (six learned of their H.I.V. status that way). None of the men had sex with a partner after learning that the partner tested positive.