by Heather Corinna

Excerpted and adapted from S.E.X., the Scarleteen Book

If you're a guy with a female partner, even though you're not the one who can become pregnant, you still get choices, and you still should participate in birth control use and responsibility just as much as your female partner unless you both -- not just either one of you -- want and are prepared for a pregnancy. Understand that many methods, such as hormonal birth control like the pill or Depo-provera, which are used solely by women, carry risks and side effects (and they don't offer any STI protection). Since women bear the greater burden with pregnancy as well, many prefer to back up their birth control with condom use. So, while it may seem to you that a given method is best and easiest for you, your partner may not feel the same way since she's the one who needs to live with it, short and long-term.

For instance, she's the one who may have a diminished sex drive or less natural lubrication because of the pill, and the one who will need to remember to take it at the same time every day. If a given method seems like a good choice to you, by all means, bring it up for discussion, but know that the choice is primarily your partner's to make, and she's the best one to make it.

It might be difficult for you to understand the weight of birth control use for women; to comprehend how much a woman has to think about it, how much real estate it takes up in her head. However, it's not unlike safer sex practices, which you can know plenty about. Think about the flip-flopping that might sometimes go round in your head when you're making those choices --

Do I really need to use a condom for oral sex?
Can I get away with not using one for intercourse just this once?
Didn't I hear her ex-cheated? What if she got a disease from him?
When do I ask her about it? How will she react? What if she takes it as an insult, or thinks I don't trust her?
Do I even have condoms with me tonight?

-- the strong desire to avoid an STI, and even how sometimes, it just feels tiresome, or kills your buzz, to have to bring worries and practical issues to bed with you when you just want to freely enjoy yourself without being bogged down with the heavy stuff. Your girlfriend shoulders all that, just like you, and all of those sorts of issues when it comes to pregnancy and birth control that you really don't.

If you're in a long-term or committed sexual partnership with a woman, it's a great idea to suggest helping to shoulder aspects of birth control you can contribute to, like paying for it, helping with transportation to OB/GYN visits, or playing the part you can when it comes to using a given method.

Since you're unlikely to find a doctor that will advocate or allow vasectomy for young men, if you're sexually active, the three methods you can use which are directed by you, or reliant upon you, are condom use, withdrawal or deciding not to have the kinds of sex which present pregnancy risks. All of these methods are highly effective with proper use, and all are great backup methods for other forms of contraception.

Beyond safer sex issues, condom use makes for excellent birth control backup for any other method (though withdrawal can also be used as a backup, it just offers no STI protection), so insisting on that and being in charge of that aspect of birth control can be a great role for you. If we're talking about abstaining from sex which can create pregnancy, since so many young women report feeling that intercourse is something boyfriends push for, if you can be someone to support or initiate not going there, not only is that one way to prevent pregnancy, it also can give your female partner a clear sense that intercourse isn't something she should feel she has to do for your benefit, especially if it carries risks she doesn't want to take or can't yet reduce otherwise.

Understand, too, that when it all comes down to it, of all the birth control options there are, condoms are one of the -- if not the -- least invasive options there are when it comes to side effects as well as the alteration of sexual sensation, for all partners. So, if you think that condoms get in the way of YOU feeling everything you want to feel during sex, understand that most other methods impair or disrupt female sexual sensation far more. Withdrawal may not reduce sensation at all, but it, too, disrupts sexual experience to some degree if a male partner wants to continue with intercourse to or through orgasm/ejaculation.

It may also happen that you someday have a partner who isn't responsible with her part in birth control, or who wishes to become pregnant when you really don't wish to be involved in that. In those situations, the burden of birth control, via condoms, or by vetoing sex if you don't agree with a partner about readiness for parenthood, may lie solely with you, and you have every right to insist your OWN choices be respected.

It's also completely okay for you to insist on birth control backup via condom use or withdrawal, even if your partner has told you she already uses an additional method. If you need or want a backup for your own security, your need for extra protection is just as valid as hers. Of course, if you have any reason to believe you can't trust your partner in being honest about already using a method, the best tack is not to sexually partner with that person at all: trust is a pretty important and vital part of healthy sexual partnership.

On the other hand, you may want or feel ready for parenthood when your female partner isn't, or may wish not to worry about birth control altogether. In other words, it may be you doing or thinking about the birth control sabotage or irresponsibility. Thing is...well, let's not tiptoe. That's not okay. If you're ready for sexual partnership, you need to also be ready to deal with birth control and to respect your partner's wishes when it comes to parenthood and birth control options. If you have a partner who wants to use condoms as birth control and you just don't, then you need to be able to just opt out of sex with that person, taking responsibility for your own wants, rather than battling them or arguing.

You should be just as responsible for birth control as your partner is.

No matter what kind of sexual relationship you're in, you still need to be bringing your half of birth control responsibility to the table, rather than assuming your female partner is or must be solely responsible for taking care of that: like any other part of partnered sex, birth control should be a game for two. That's not just an ethical issue, it's a practical one: if you don't and a pregnancy does occur, your female partner can hold you legally responsible should she see a pregnancy through to term. So, even though it may feel like it's not your issue, and you do have limited choices in the matter, a good deal of responsibility does still lie with you, and to be a good partner, you need to step up and take charge of the aspects you can.

Want more info on birth control, reproduction, and pregnancy risks?

• What's the Risk?
• Margaret Sanger's Disneyland
• Condom Basics: A User's Manual
• Where DID I Come From?
• Birth Control Bingo!