Good question BU. Poly-fi usually means a closed sexual group that treasures sexual fidelity and therefore trusts that the need for most safe sex practices is not necessary. At least this is what I understand.
Yeah, that's how I thought of it, too. Just wondered that what if one partner has HIV or Hep C, but that's really a question for everyone who ever potentially wants to have sex, not just for poly-fi folks.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A further thought on mental images/stereotypes of different relationship formations;
When we are starting out on poly, we need some kind of idea on what we are striving for. That may or may not correlate with the actual reality of any given situation.
More likely than not, most people in here at some point thought they were going to find that One Special Person and be happily monogamous for the rest of their lives. Well, the image of monogamy we had in our heads for some reason didn't quite correlate with the reality of monogamy.
So we came here, or read a book, and learned a few new cool words that approximated what we thought we wanted or needed. I thought I wanted to be part of a triad - turns out, that's not what I need from poly. The reality of triads was different from the mental image I had in my head. I also thought the primary/secondary system was not for me, until I found myself living in one.
So someone can think they want poly-fi and then along the line find out that they don't need to limit the amount of possible future partners for reason x. Or someone can insist they can only be fully themselves in an open poly arrangement and turns out they don't need that to feel free for reason y. Or someone can think they really would like poly, or mono, or poly-fi, or open poly, but find that their real life situation is different and be okay with it, because they would not want to risk what they have now for some fuzzy future image of what they think they need.
Right now, I think I mostly need love to be happy and free and fulfilled.