Abstract
“Why don’t you just find an HIV-negative man and settle down?” was the question that a psychotherapist posed to one HIV-negative man I interviewed whose lover had died of AIDS. I imagine the therapist’s tone was that of a Jewish mother chiding her daughter to “find a nice Jewish boy.”
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Notes
Susan Kippax, June Crawford, Mark Davis, et al., “Sustaining Safe Sex: A Longitudinal Study of a Sample of Homosexual Men,” AIDS 7.2 (1993), pp. 257–263.
The Kippax study notes that agreements about sex outside relationships are common. Among the 82 men who had regular partners (a sample that included HIV-positive, HIV-negative, and untested men), 74 percent had a clear agreement on sexual practice outside their regular relationship. Among those men, 39 percent had agreed to no sex outside the relationship, 23 percent had agreed to “safe sex” outside the relationship but not in the relationship, and 36 percent had agreed to “safe sex” both outside the relationship and in the relationship. This last group contained those HIV-negative men who practice safer sex even with HIV-negative partners.
For example, see Gay Men’s Health Centre, “Relationships: Your Choice” (South Yarra, Australia: Victorian AIDS Council, 1994), which presents a list of steps that gay men in negative-negative couples might take before deciding not to use condoms. Among the steps are these: “Discuss and promise each other that you will avoid anal sex outside the relationship, or that if you or your partner fuck with anyone else, condoms will be used. Discuss and promise each other that if either of you slips-up or has an accident with unsafe sex outside the relationship, you will tell the other immediately and go back to safe sex until you’ve both been tested again. Agree that either partner can insist on using condoms again. and that it won’t mean the end of the relationship. Don’t punish your partner for being honest.”.
See also AIDS Committee of Toronto, “Can You Relate? Safer Sex in Gay Relationships: Think about It, Talk about It” (Toronto, Canada: AIDS Committee of Toronto, 1994), which offers this: “Some gay men, when they get into a relationship, stop using condoms for anal sex (fucking) because they feel that caring for someone or being in love is all the protection they need. If you are both truly HIV-, and you both never do anything to put yourselves at risk outside the relationship, you can stop using condoms. But it often isn’t that simple. Ultimately, the choice is up to you. But decisions about condom use need to be based on more than just caring for someone. If you don’t think you, as a couple, are willing and able to deal with the many issues that are involved, then play it safe.”.
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© 1995 William I. Johnston
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Johnston, W.I. (1995). Negative-Negative Couples. In: HIV-Negative. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6106-8_16
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