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Living in fear of STD's

  • 10-06-2013 8:45pm
    #1
    LegacyUser
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 166,026 ✭✭✭✭


    I'm a 23 year old gay man who recently became sexually active with other men. About 3 months ago I met up with a guy I met online. We met a few times and we fooled around and went as far as performing oral sex, both giving and receiving.

    At the time I wasn't really aware of the risks of STD's from oral sex, but when I started to read up on it, it definitely scared me. I started to notice symptoms (or believed them to be symptoms), and one month after I last met the guy, I decided to bite the bullet and get tested.

    I was a nervous wreck. I really thought I had caught something, especially HIV. I don't know why, I didn't have a reason to believe I had caught something, besides having a mouth ulcer a couple of weeks after meeting this guy (I read somewhere that that was a symptom). However, after getting the test done, everything came back okay.

    Then, I later read that tests after 4 weeks are not conclusive. I tried to ignore this fact until recently. It has been nagging me the whole time, at the back of my mind, "What if I have HIV and they didn't catch it?". Anytime I was ill I would check to see if it was a symptom of HIV. So to end it once and for all I went last week for another check.

    I am waiting for the results at the moment and once again I am scared witless. A minute doesn't go by without me thinking "What if this comes back positive?". All because I tried to embrace my sexuality.

    How can anyone seeking a partner, or even a short fling, relax when all these possible diseases are around? You can barely go beyond kissing without putting yourself at risk of infection. Are we supposed to ask a potential partner to get tested before a sexual encounter?

    I am living in fear, but what can I do? How do you manage these risks?


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