Talk Hard!

 Planned Parenthood is currently running a campaign encouraging people to get yourself tested for STDs (GYT09).  They put together a video with a few different people talking about the experience of getting tested for the first time and why it’s important.

I think it’s very important to get tested, but I also think the third speaker on this video implies a belief about things that I want to counter.  She speaks of testing as something that lets you know if you’re in the clear or not, and then, as you get into a relationship, if you need to have a conversation, she says, you can have it.

What I want to say is that whether or not you have tested ‘clean’ for STDs, you always need to have a conversation about them with a prospective new partner.  Partly because not everyone knows all that they should know about STDs, and how they are transmitted, what the risks are, and what STDs can and cannot be tested for. Also, different people have different levels of risk acceptance, so behavior you think is risky your prospective partner may think is safe, and if she thinks it was safe, she might not tell you about it.  Is contact between the hands and the genitals safe for instance? Well, hands can have cuts on them and you can catch diseases that way though the odds are low: to be on the safe side, some people use gloves or condoms. Other people just accept that risk, because they’re okay with it.  How about kissing?  Well, a lot of people don’t know cold sores are caused by a strain of herpes so they might not watch out for that risk. Going down on someone?  A lot of people will have oral sex with no protection and think little of it, despite the fact that that is actually risky behavior.

I once started to get involved with a guy, and when he came to my bedroom for the first time he thought he knew what-all we could do that was safe. When I said we had to have a conversation he told me what he knew and how he was clean, and he was ready to go. I had to say “hold up, we need to talk.  I have herpes.” And then I told him all about herpes, because he didn’t know very much about it, like how you can have it without symptoms, and transmit it from mouth to genitals or mouth to mouth, and then we slowed way down.

Herpes is something you can get tested for these days, but the tests are not completely reliable.  Plus most standard test suites do not include a test for herpes. Other tests are more reliable, and very important, but a number of STDs take time to show up in the body, so if you’ve gotten tested but had sexual contact with someone new shortly before getting tested, they could have given you something that doesn’t show up on the tests.

So: Get yourself tested, definitely! To be rigorous about it, wait until you have gone 6 months without contact with a new disease vector - meaning you’ve been without a partner or you and your partner have not had any other new partners for 6 months. Then get tested. (If this really doesn’t fit your lifestyle don’t let that stop you though - do get tested! - just understand that while a positive result is a concern, a negative result may not guarantee a clean bill of health.)

Continue to get tested throughout your life, before and after sexual contact with new partners. Also, educate yourself about STDs, spend some time thinking about your own comfort levels with risk, and talk about it with every partner you have.  For their safety, and for yours.  Talk hard.

I have herpes. I have since 1995.

Wow, you may be thinking, why would she want to tell the world she’s a skag ho? I mean, isn’t that what people who have STIs are?

Well, in a word: NO. In fact, having STIs (sexually transmitted infections) is pretty common. Somewhere in the range of 75% of all sexually active adults in the US have had an STI at some point or another in their lives. And right now, according to the news, fully a quarter of the teen girls in this country are infected.

Some of those infections will get treated or heal on their own (the body really can fight infection, some of the time, if your immune system isn’t compromised), but some infections you have for the rest of your life. Herpes is one of them.

While the headlines seem to be focusing on the numbers about young women, I want to make sure to mention another statistic from this study of 14-19-year-olds: nearly half of the African Americans in the study were infected. So if you have a black partner who is in that age group, odds are nearly 50 percent that he or she has at least one of the diseases monitored in the study — human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, genital herpes and trichomoniasis, a common parasite.

How do you know if a partner is infected? Well, you can’t be certain. Some of these infections have symptoms, some don’t. Some of them can be tested for, and getting tested, treated and monitored and is a good idea. But it can cost money, and it can be a drag. So what’s the quick and easy answer? Assume that any potential partner could be infected, and always use protection. Condoms, dental dams, gloves, whatever’s appropriate for what you’re doing. (If what you’re doing is drugs, sharing needles should be right out, and I hope you know that. HIV/AIDS wasn’t covered in this study, but it can be transmitted that way as well as sexually, so don’t risk it.)

And what if your partner tells you he or she is clean? Well, how are they to know? Getting tested (at least six months after having any new partners to give time for infections to be detectable) is a pretty solid level of reassurance, but not 100%. Let me repeat what I said above: some of these infections will not cause symptoms in some people, or may cause symptoms they won’t notice until later, like cancer. Reassure your partner that it’s not that you don’t trust them, it’s just that you want both of you to be as safe as possible. You could have infections you don’t know about, and so could they.

I caught herpes from a guy who regularly got a bad cold sore on his lip whenever he was stressed. He actually denied that I got it from him because he didn’t believe he had it (there are two types of herpes and both can be carried either in the mouth or the genitals). I later found out a former girlfriend of his also caught it from him, but she got it in her mouth. Me, I got the worst case of genital herpes the nurse at planned parenthood had ever seen. Lucky me.

If you do have an STI though, it’s not the end of the world. Go to a doctor, and get it treated. Find out about ways to take care of it, like taking L-Lysine to suppress outbreaks if you have herpes. And don’t feel like you have to hide your face in shame or put up with second-rate lovers from now on. Do take some time to examine the events that lead to your infection and whether or not you want to do things differently in the future. And do be honest with potential partners if you know you have an infection. Let them decide for themselves what they want to risk. With care, risks can be reduced, and plenty of caring relationships have started despite the fact that one partner has or had a communicable disease.

You are not alone. In fact, we’re pretty common. Talk to me if you want to know more about what it’s like.