Staying Safe
The odds of you getting a life-threatening STD aren’t as bad as public commercial announcements make them out to be. But they do exist – and the mystery that surrounds them just confuse the issue. Here we’ll break down with actual facts and stats just how safe – or unsafe – you are in the world of seduction and sex.
First Things First
Dude, wear a condom. Always. Just do it. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that if you have sex with a sick lady without a condom, you’ll get sick. Odds are you won’t.
But now we’re talking odds. With your life.
And there are other factors to consider. If you consistently have unprotected sex, your odds go from unlikely to likely to virtually assured.
If you meet a woman on adultfrienedfinder who doesn’t mind unprotected sex, good bet she’s had plenty of it as well and her odds have gone through the same process.
Even if a woman has been tested THAT DAY, it usually takes three to sex months for HIV to show up in tests. So if you’re going to have unprotected sex with anyone, you have to trust that person with your life. Because that’s exactly what you’re doing.
Not to mention, babies. I don’t care who you are, if you get a woman pregnant, it’s gonna change your life. No matter what you decide to do, you’re a different person after. So even if your girl is on the pill, it only takes forgetting one day – by mistake or on purpose – to completely mess up your world.
So just wear the condom. Is it 100% safe? No, there’s still a slight chance that infection or seed can make it through. But once you consider the natural odds, and then combine them with the odds of making it past the plastic (especially in the case of STD’s), those odds are negligible. Like in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Meaning we’re talking lottery odds. Meaning wear that condom.
HIV Facts
Alright, let’s get the record straight, first. HIV, you probably know, is a disease that attacks your immune system, your white blood cells. Once your immune system is sufficiently compromised, we change the name to AIDS. AIDS doesn’t technically kill you – but it let’s down all your defenses so a whole host of relatively weak or easily fought diseases get in the door. People usually end up dying from the common cold, or some extremely exotic disease that would be a nasty killer – if it weren’t for the fact that everyone’s immune system can easily defeat the bugger. Not so once you have AIDS.
It used to be once you contracted HIV, you had about a decade of relative health before AIDS kicked in and killed you. Now, people are living much longer due to (very expensive) drug cocktails that are getting better and better at keeping HIV at bay. With any luck, we’ll find a cure, but you sure don’t want to have crazy sex with that hope in mind.
How likely is a man to contract HIV from an infected woman? Good news – not very likely. Examining purely vaginal sex, the results vary by HIV strain (there are five) and research group, but the most conservative estimate is 1 in 300. 1 in 1000 is a more accepted number, and some studies actually say it’s only 1 in 10,000. And that’s having unprotected sex with an infected woman.
Remember, HIV can only be transmitted by three bodily fluids – blood, vaginal secretions, and semen. It’s present in saliva and tears and a whole host of other fluids – but not in sufficient quantities to transmit the disease. Kissing is about as safe as you can get.
Now, bear in mind that, in the U.S., about 1 in 300 people has HIV. That means, if you hook up with a random chick unprotected, your odds of getting HIV – by the most conservative estimate – is 1 in 90,000. That of course is a straight estimate – there are all sorts of other factors that can up or decrease your chances (the very fact that both partners are willing to have unprotected sex ups your risk considerably, because of their likely history).
The biggest wild-card is cuts and abrasions – both large visible ones or small micro-tears in the skin. In other words, if your dick is red or raw or sore from hard usage and you’re having sex with an infected woman, you’re at BIG risk of getting something.
HIV Scare Tactics
All HIV needs to get transmitted is a bit of one person’s infected fluid to enter your bloodstream. In the normal course of events, this is insanely unlikely – but it is still used by religious and conservative groups to promote scare tactics.
Example: you can get HIV from oral sex.
Truth: technically, sure. Just like you can get HIV by bumping elbows and exchanging blood that enters through tears caused by the bumps. Hey, anything’s possible.
Of course, no one has EVER gotten HIV or AIDS by bumping bloody elbows. And no one has EVER gotten HIV from oral sex.
That’s right. Never. Think about how many times each day people are having oral sex. Think about how many of those people likely have a disease. Then think about how many of them are wearing a condom or dental dam during that oral sex.
And yet it’s never been passed on that way.
If it were to be, how would it happen? Well, if you had a cut on your penis and her gums were bleeding, maybe. Or if her excessive secretions entered a cold sore inside your mouth, again, that would do it.
In fact, it doesn’t sound that unlikely, at least for cunnilingus, does it?
Thing is, saliva is a pretty powerful fluid. Just about anything that touches it, it starts to break it down. So even if you had all the cuts and blood and everything was perfect, odds are good your natural saliva would kill anything before it found a proper opening.
Odds are so good that no other outcome has ever happened. Of course it’s all about comfort; if you’re nervous, then wear that condom, and that dental dam (something like a plastic bag for your mouth). Refuse to do anything when you have an open sore or cut in your cheek. But the truth is, oral sex is very very very unlikely to get you sick; don’t worry about it more than you would lightening strikes.
Anal Sex
Anal sex, on the other hand, is MUCH more dangerous than vaginal sex. This is because the anus simply isn’t designed for the insertion of a penis. so it will usually tear at least a bit during sex.
This means, instead of MAYBE having tears and blood, you are ASSURED of tears and blood. As you can imagine, with that thrown in, your risk skyrockets.
That’s the main reason HIV sprang out of the gay male community to start – lots of anal sex, lots of high risk contact. The only thing riskier is needle sharing – since then you’re just inserting infected blood into your bloodstream, that’s about as high risk as it gets.
Bottom line, NEVER have anal sex without a condom.
Female Risk
It bears mentioning now that for women, the risk of transmission is much higher. This is because, regardless of where you insert your little buddy, she’s MUCH more likely to get micro tears- and after those micro tears are created, you go and spray them with sperm and semen.
Some studies estimate that if a woman has unprotected anal sex with an infected man, her odds of contracting the disease are an insane 10%. That’s per entrance (with subsequent encounters in a sequence having higher and higher chances).
Vaginal sex isn’t as bad, but again the odds are a lot worse for women.
So don’t be a selfish prick – that condom isn’t only for you.
Get Tested
Listen, having HIV is no longer the death knell it once was. With modern medicine, you’ll live a good long time – and we might cure it before your time rolls around.
That is, IF you know about it early enough.
I get tested fairly regularly – it’s always nerve-wracking, because even if you’ve never done anything high-risk, still. what if? What if you’re the freak occurrence? What if you got it in that fist-fight in first grade? WHAT IF?
But you’ve gotta know. So get tested. If the worst WHAT IF is true, then you’re ready to deal with it (and stop yourself from infecting others). And if it’s not, then you can relax and, as long as you practice good safety, you should stay fine (although I always get checked-up occasionally – and if you’re shy about getting tested, then give blood. They test all blood that comes through, and if you have HIV, they’ll give you a call.)
A little more good news – although HIV sometimes has no visible side-affects until 10 years down the road, it often has one.
When you first contract it, most people get a somewhat-off flu-type non-flu sickness. Just because you don’t have it doesn’t mean you’re safe – but if you do, and it’s right after having high-risk sex, get yourself tested immediately (or after 3 months, when the tests are pretty accurate).
You can’t be scared of the truth if it ever comes to that – because the truth just might save your life.
But rather than go through that stress – which is usually the worst thing most people will go through, but it’s bad enough – just wear the damn condom. Wear it. For your piece of mind, if nothing else.