One night, a late-night hamburger and latte at an event became the best dinner ever when the person beside me turned and introduced themselves.
My sad meal was promptly forgotten as we talked and talked about everything and nothing. It didn’t take too long to strike me that my dinner mate was quite attractive, with this laid-back air that made them very desirable to me.
A couple of hours later, we left the dinner table in the belief that we were each retiring for the night. But you know how these stories go. Before I knew it, I was getting kissed in the middle of the road between our suites, which was very, very romantic. And when they asked if I wanted us to go to my room, I didn’t think too much before I said yes. It turned out to be one of my better sex experiences.
Some days later, I received a text from them, which, understandably, got me giddy. Would we be meeting again soon? The text started off well with the customary, “It was lovely meeting you.” I should’ve sensed trouble when the next sentence began with, “I’m so sorry…”
Nothing prepared me for the rest of the text: they’d tested positive for gonorrhea, had been asymptomatic, and it might be worth my time to get tested, et cetera, sorry.
I’ve had a lot of disappointments in my life, and have crashed headlong from lots of expectations. But this felt like a new low, even by my messy-life standards.
I remember finding it very comical when I read that text. Like, who wrote this script? Was I in the middle of some college romcom without knowing it? How do you go from rapture to rupture? And, gonorrhea of all infections? Why not something nicer sounding? Gonorrhea sounds like war, like horror. Scratch romcom, I was in a cheap college horror flick. Super Gonorrhea Apocalypse.
Thankfully for me, I’ve got a practical mind. So, right after my fifteen seconds of dramatic despair, I started figuring out the solution to this problem. Gonorrhea was a curable STI, from what I remembered. So, no harm done. Get tested, get treated. Straightforward. Easy-peasy.
Except, it wasn’t.
Not too long after I’d read that text, I started feeling contaminated, unclean. For someone who’s obsessed with being in control and orderly and what I perceive to be perfect, it was a debilitating situation. I felt like a walking disease. I worried I would infect everyone around me. I suddenly started feeling symptoms. I wanted to crawl into a space, away from everybody, until I could be dunked into some all-cleansing bath.
I knew better. I knew I wasn’t going to die in the next twenty-four hours without immediate medical attention. But that didn’t stop my mind from going prehistoric on me. It didn’t help that I was, at that moment, unable to access healthcare and get counseling and testing.
I was obviously struggling with all the stigma around STIs that I had subconsciously absorbed for much of my life. Popular wisdom isn’t wise at all: it lies and says that STIs are bad and dirty and very despicable and fatal, and thus, so are the people who have them.
This was the frame of mind I was in when I met up with a friend and sexual partner a few days later. I kept wondering if I was being unfair to them by sitting in their car. Couldn’t I infect them, or anyone else who’d share the same seat afterward? (Factually, no, I could not, but again, stigma lies.) I debated whether I felt comfortable sharing the story about my sexual encounter, the follow-up text, and how I was feeling about the situation. I finally opened up to them when they kept letting on that they wanted to have sex with me. I also really needed to share this burden with someone else. It turned out to be a bittersweet decision.
On the one hand, it felt relieving to finally have someone to share this with, a friend who understood and did not judge me.
But it didn’t take long for me to see the subtle way my friend’s behavior towards me changed. After my revelation, they stopped holding my hand. Very subtly, but in my highly strung state, it was all too easy to notice. When they dropped me off, I had to request a hug so I wouldn’t feel so wretched.
As the days went by, it began to dawn on me that my distressing situation wasn’t just a matter of struggling with conditioned stigma. The truth was, I didn’t know as much about STIs as I’d thought I’d known, and that ignorance was really hurting me.
I wasn’t really sure what I understood about STIs beyond knowing that gonorrhea wasn’t contagious through casual contact, like sitting in a car with a friend.
When I took stock of what I really knew of STIs, I found I was operating on half facts and lots of assumptions. In the event of exposure coupled with a history of debilitating anxiety, knowledge about STIs could be the difference between a panic attack and making a plan and calmly awaiting test results.
I didn’t know, for example, that it takes about one to four weeks for tests to accurately read the presence or absence of STIs like gonorrhea in the body systemexternal link, opens in a new tab. This means that testing too soon after exposure could give you a false negative result. When I learnt this, I was finally able to wait for the time when I’d be able to get tested with relative calm, which coincided with the suggested timeframe.
I also didn’t know that it’s not guaranteed that you’ll automatically get infected with an STI once you have unprotected sex with an infected personexternal link, opens in a new tab. There are such things as the person’s viral load; the length of time you were exposed; the sort of sex you had; the state of your own immune system; and whether and how you used barriers during sex. Of course, this is not an invitation to werewolf and go wild (as Joker advocates) in the hopes that the odds will swing in your favor.
I also finally assured myself that, yes indeed, I could use the toilet without the nagging guilty feeling that I was spreading disease to other people, since bacterial STIs can’t survive outside the bodyexternal link, opens in a new tab.
How did I, who took pride in my sex expertise, not know things as basic as these concerning STIs? Sex education is already an area that society in its present state fails at, but when it comes to STIs, the bar is even lower. I’m sure it’s a complex situation with lots of contributing factors, but I found for myself that one thing is certain: ignorance is the tool with which stigma is propagated. We fear what we don’t know or understand. We combat issues ineffectively, or we combat what was harmless in the first place.
Accurate knowledge is powerful, including when it comes to sex. It’s a duty I owe myself to learn what’s what about what and how best I can seek pleasure in a manner that honors my health. Being honest with myself, though, was also important.
While I was geeking out over gonorrhea, I couldn’t shake off the fact that the situation might have been very different if I’d made some different choices in the heat of the moment. I knew the rules: know your partner, use protection. In hindsight, my surprised Pikachu face when I received the dreaded text was quite ironic.
It was time to sit down and confront the mental health factor in my sex life.
One of the symptoms of borderline personality disorderexternal link, opens in a new tab, with which I am diagnosed, is impulsive and risky behavior, which can manifest as, amongst others, unprotected sexual encounters. I have often dismissed this particular symptom as not applicable to me, because I thought I was too cautious to label myself risky. Yet my track record begged to differ. Unprotected sex was my default. The time had come to admit to myself that I was indeed an impulsive person and being that way had hurt me.
It was particularly necessary for me to confront my sexual behavior and how my mental health was impacting it because of my co-morbid anxiety diagnosis. Every time I engaged in risky sex, I always had to endure the worst anxiety and paranoia until I was cleared. It didn’t feel like self- love, subjecting myself to that torture time and again. I needed to consciously start centering my sex life in my therapy skills practice, which, for reasons I can’t explain, I’d never done before. One of the most useful skills I’ve learned in dialectic behaviour therapyexternal link, opens in a new tab (specifically developed for BPD) is the concept of doing what’s effective, regardless of how your emotions are looking at the moment. For me, it looks like asking myself, What’s effective in this situation? What’s going to save me from future sorrows? When it comes to sex, it’s as straightforward as prioritizing safe sex.
I understood that one of the reasons I was struggling to commit to responsible, safe sex was the myth that it’s boring, unexciting, and style-cramping. I mean, depending on how you introduce it, a condom can cause friction. But what’s the point of being artistically inclined if I can’t find ways to romanticize safer sex?
Imagine, for example, treating (mutually exchanged) STI test results as nudes. “Send current test thirst traps, here’s mine.” Can’t it be sexy to whisper in someone’s ear when things start heating up, “Let’s get lab naked?”
When I finally got tested, the results came back negative. I’d never felt more relieved, as well as very grateful that I got to learn these necessary lessons the not-so-hard way.
Going forward, when it comes to sex, I’m prioritizing and romanticizing safety. This looks like regularly testing for STIs. It’s also taking the initiative to talk to our partner(s) about our STI status to show that we care about their sexual health, and then inviting them to reciprocate. As well as discussing and initiating barrier use for that sizzling, safe sex.
I am also prioritizing knowledge, which I’ve seen for myself is truly power. I’ll go on cultivating genuine curiosity and an open mind about sex; seeking out factual information from credible sources (such as resources on Scarleteen); questioning my assumptions in light of what I learn; and working towards changing ideas and habits that no longer hold up to what is true.
