STIs and losing my mind

[Bee7501]

Hi everyone,

I guess I'm just looking for answers as I've had a horrible few weeks and I'm struggling to make sense of it all.

I'm currently in a committed relationship and have been for around 3 months. I met my boyfriend on a hookup site and neither of us were looking for relationships and were seeing other people when we first met.

I found out 3 weeks ago that I had chlamydia, after additional tests they also found mycoplasma. There were three possible people who passed it on to me. My boyfriend or two close friends that I'd had a threesome with before becoming exclusive with my boyfriend.

My symptoms began around 1 month ago, one of the guys had been tested and got retested and was clean both times, the other guy said two of the girls he'd slept with since both tested and were clean. He's now been tested but still waiting for the results.

So at this point it's really looking like my boyfriend cheated on me. One guy is definitely clean and the other one has had sex with two girls who both tested negative since. The doctor tells me I probably got it around the time of infection as usually if you're symptomatic you're symptomatic. My symptoms show up a few weeks after his lads holiday. It's all kind of pointing to him.

Except here's the catch. He tested negative on both mycoplasma and chlamydia even though he's been having unprotected sex with me for four months?!

HELP this is driving me insane my anxiety and depression have increased massively and I just don't know what's going on. It's causing issues between me and my boyfriend because I don't know whether I should trust him or not.

[Siân]

Hi Bee!

Welcome to the boards. It sounds to me like you're doing the right things - getting yourself checked out and talking to your recent partners about it too. It is entirely possible that your friend who is waiting for their results will test positive - even if his other partners haven't - as even if we're carrying an STI we won't transmit it 100% of the times we have sex and depending on the STI they can take a few weeks or months to be detectable. It sounds like the best thing to do right now is make sure you're focusing on your own treatment. What do you think?

In general, we recommend using barriers every time you have sex. If people in a committed relationship want to stop using these, our advice is to both get tested and if the results come back negative to continue using barriers for another 6 months before getting tested again, to be sure that there weren't any recent and undetectable infections missed in the first round of testing. Does that sound reasonable?