Getting Real

Some HIV negative men may feel having HIV could bring them closer to their partner. At a time when you might long to be as similar as possible, it can be tempting to see sharing the same HIV status as the glue to hold you together.

"Wouldn’t things be easier if I had HIV too? No more worrying about getting it, no condoms between us. We’ll always be a couple so we could go through having HIV together…always there for each other. And if I had HIV he might worry less about me leaving him."

Darren


What the counsellor says…

In this together?
Believing this could store up problems for the future. If you get HIV too, your partner could end up feeling guilty or angry that he’d infected you, feelings that may only appear once the infection happens. How could this hurt your relationship? And who’s to say that if you got HIV you wouldn’t get ill first, leaving him to worry and look after you, instead of you helping him with his illness?

Cover me
Condoms can be tricky to use but there are ways of making them work better for you. The short term hassle of them has to be weighed against the life-long difficulties of being HIV positive. Two people with a serious illness means a lot more worry and complications for a relationship than if just one has it. Although some men see giving up condoms as a sign of how deep their feelings are, many couples see using condoms to protect the uninfected partner as a sign of their love, the ultimate in caring and protecting someone.

Sometimes the HIV negative partner can convince themselves that unprotected sex isn’t really risky. It can be tempting to think that infection won’t happen, that somehow you’re a special case.

"When we’re making love my boyfriend has taken the condom off a few times. He says nothing bad has happened by now so why worry? In his family they never get ill, he says. He’s very fit and reckons his healthy life-style means he fights off infections. He thinks by now he’s got resistance to HIV."

Gary

What the counsellor says...

Resistant to reality
Some partners end up believing they are immune or in some way naturally protected from HIV. They can also use a number of justifications for not using condoms, including an HIV positive partner’s low viral load or the different level of risk depending on who gets fucked and who does the fucking. While someone may see the danger in unprotected sex with a stranger, the same action with someone they are so familiar with can be seen as relatively harmless.

Shake up
Breaking through this sense of being invincible can be difficult. It can take a powerful challenge to shake their belief that they don’t need to worry about HIV – especially if sex without condoms has become the norm without, it seems, infection happening. Someone outside the relationship challenging him could dent his complacency – especially if he was shown that the reality of being HIV positive is far from easy. Couple counselling could open his eyes to the reality of his risk-taking.


How we see it...

"You won’t want to think about this but ask yourself ‘what if the relationship finishes?"

Eamonn and Ali

"Imagine if one day you did split up. How much would you and him regret that you both ended up with HIV?"

Andrew and Noel

"Having the same HIV status doesn’t guarantee two people stay a couple. It didn’t keep me and my ex together."

Tyrone and Bill

Click here for details of support with safer sex and suggestions for places to go to talk over difficulties you may have keeping safe, visit www.chapsonline.org.uk/condoms or talk to someone confidentially at THT Direct 0845 12 21 200 (week days 10am-10pm, weekends midday until 6pm)