Scared About STIs - Opinions Please?

[littlelovely]

Hey there. I'm freaking out over possibly contracting something from a prior partner. Almost a year ago I slept with someone twice, whom I thought was my friend. Turns out that I was only a notch on the belt of the pretty girls they knew. We had sex twice, for about two minutes each time, no ejaculation as I panicked both times and made them stop. They said that they used a condom but it was dark and now that I look back on it, I have a hard time believing them. They were very against it. I went to the STI clinic in my area yesterday but they won't have my blood results for another four weeks. What are the chances of me contracting HIV/AIDS? I know they've slept with multiple people and while they said they were clean, I don't believe them - completely panicking over the whole situation. Please help. Thank you!

[Mo]

Hi littlelovely, and welcome to Scarleteen.

I'm sorry to hear you're so stressed about this, but you've taken the right steps to getting answers by going to a clinic. We really can't give you any sort of estimate on how likely it is that you could contract HIV or any other STI, since we don't know this guy's history with safer sex practices, if he did use a condom with you, whether his statements about his STI status are accurate, etc. If he has been getting tested regularly, and has used condoms with previous partners (and with you), then the risk is very low, but we can't estimate your actual risk because there are so many factors that go into it. I get that this is super stressful, but I think the best thing you can do for yourself now is to be good to yourself while you're waiting for results, and maybe think about what steps you want to take around safer sex with partners in the future so you can reduce some of this worry. This article may be helpful: Safe, Sound & Sexy: A Safer Sex How-To

Another thing you may want to do is get in touch with the clinic to make sure they're planning on contacting you if your tests all come up negative. Many doctors and clinics operate on a "no news is good news" model and will only contact you if there's a problem! So if you think you'll feel better with a call either way, it's probably a good idea to contact them to make sure they can do that.

As a side note - we do ask that people not use "clean" as a euphemism for "free of STIs" here, as folks who do have them aren't "dirty." There's a lot of stigma against STIs so we want to minimize that as much as we can in this space.