Life and sex with HIV

Everything stills after you hear the news,” said Jonathon*, a 27-year-old who lives in Longmont. “Suddenly, you can’t think straight. You tune out what the doctor is saying to you. An hour earlier your biggest concern was what that Big Mac you ate was going to do to your diet. Now your sex life feels like it’s over.”

HIV can have a significant impact on sex – for both the HIV-positive and HIV-negative alike. The possibility of transmission becomes the forefront, and for this reason that many people are afraid to get an HIV test, fearing that testing positive could doom their sex lives.

“We hear that some people believe their sex life has ended with an HIV-positive diagnosis,” said Lauren Shulman, the preventative director at the Northern Colorado Health Network. “It is in large part due to social and internalized stigma surrounding the virus.”

When Jonathon tested positive, he felt as though all the fears that he’d been associating with HIV for years became real in an instant.

“Like a lot of guys I know, I was afraid to get the test to begin with,” Jonathon said, “because there’s always the possibility that a positive result is going to come out of it and then – whoop – there goes your libido and any sense of normalcy. It was like as a kid, you never wanted to look under the bed for fear that something might really be there. And that’s what learning I had HIV felt like at first. It was like I was confronting my monster.”

Fear of the unknown – when that applies to one’s own HIV status – is just one of the stigmas surrounding HIV. But once the virus is on the table, a whole different stigma comes to play: The idea that the best way to avoid contracting the virus is to avoid people who have it altogether.

“The component of rejection in order to achieve safety is one of the biggest contributors to stigma,” said Scott McGlothlen, an HIV activist. (McGlothlen is a regular contributor to Out Front.)

Shulman said that wanting to be completely safe is one thing, but that open communication – not rejection – is the answer.

“Openly communicating with sex partners is really important,” said Shulman. “This can include disclosure of HIV status, if and when a person is comfortable disclosing.

These conversations can make sex safer and more enjoyable for both parties.”

Experts say that having protected sex after an HIV diagnosis, with both HIV-positive and HIV-negative partners, is possible, and is in fact safer than unprotected sex with partners of unknown HIV status.

Two years after being diagnosed with HIV, Jonathon said that the willingness to talk about the virus both with him and his partners has been the key to safer sex and a more open relationship.

“Several months after I learned my status, I started seeing this new guy and when he called me for our fourth date, I had a feeling like it could be the night where our hand holding in the movie theater could lead to something after the show,” Jonathon said. “Even though I had done my research and talked with the docs about how to have sex as close to 100 percent safe as possible, I still wanted to tell him.”

Jose Plazola, a volunteer with the Boulder County AIDS Project said that having a conversation with your partner is key to practicing safe sex, saying that “it makes you more aware of what you are doing during sex.”

“With HIV, it’s hard to just go for it and do what you want because you can be putting your partner at risk,” Plazola said. “This is an opportunity that opens up the dialogue about sex.”

In Jonathon’s case, open dialog has been an important factor to keeping sex safe with HIV. Yet many organizations including Colorado AIDS Project and the Health Network mentioned other safety tips, as well, to be “99.9 percent” safe.

“We always encourage safe sex practices, like using condoms and lube correctly and experimenting with different types until all people find the type that works best for them,” said Shulman. “For people living with HIV who are taking antiretroviral therapy, medication adherence is also an important component of reducing the likelihood of spreading the virus. We know that people living with HIV who are medication adherent are significantly less likely to transmit HIV to their sex partners.”

Plazola adds that using dental dams for oral sex and going to the restroom immediately after sex are also important factors in being safer about HIV.

HIV affects not just the sex life of an individual, but whole lives and attitudes. A certain sense of negotiation and adaption is required, according to these health professionals.

“Saying I ‘got used’ to HIV is an understatement,” Jonathon said. “I had to get used to the stigmas associated with the virus. And when it came to sex, I had to make adjustments to that, as well. It’s not just me and my partner in the bed. It’s my HIV in the bed as well.”

Talking about HIV can be like talking about the elephant in the room (or in the bed) – despite the fact that the conversation has drastically changed from 20 years ago, it’s still often considered taboo to talk about.

And this hesitance adds to the stigma, propelling an endless cycle of fear, HIV activists and experts say.

In a recent article on The Advocate in honor of World AIDS Day, a 28-year-old writer described his experience on HIV and what it means to be positive in 2012. In an op-ed titled “Reluctant Social Commentary of a Newly HIV-Positive 20-Something,” Tyler Curry said, “Fear is what you should be afraid of. An open and candid dialogue is just the medicine we need for both positive and negative gay men to cast off any unnecessary fear and reticence.”

Jonathon said that he hopes that by sharing his story in this article, people will read and get a better understanding of how HIV truly affects people.

“HIV is life-changing but it’s just that,” Jonathon said. “It changed my life and my sex life, but it didn’t put an end to either.”

*Jonathan is a pseudonym to protect the identity of the HIV-positive man interviewed by Out Front.