I was suckered into a bad gamble by sweet talk and pretty brown eyes once before. Pay attention, and you two will u happily ever after — or at least not break up over HIV. For many, their goal is to simply survive, not infect others. Index Exchange This is an ad network. This past weekend in San Francisco, I met a gay man who is homeless and u to hard drugs. It's extremely shocking, what people don't know about HIV. Greg, 35, is worried stigmatisation will stop people from disclosing that they have HIV. Risk of transmission varies with viral load, which is entirely unique to each individual. I use my virus as a way to fub out the people I don't want to know.
Emma Kaywin, a Brooklyn-based sexual health writer and activist, is here to calm your nerves and answer your questions. No gender, sexual orientation, or question is off limits, and all questions remain anonymous. My partner of eight years and I just went to get tested together, and he and I came out negative. What can I do? And then, getting a different result than your partner can be even harder if it brings issues of jealousy into the mix. There are a lot of ways to , and your partner has many treatment options that can help him contend with his new chronic condition — and protect you in the process. HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. HIV is related to but distinct from Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, or AIDS. AIDS is what we call. How Can I Get It? HIV lives in only certain human bodily fluids, and is transmitted into your bloodstream through only certain parts of your body. What this really means is that in order for you to be exposed to HIV, the other person who could be exposing you to it needs to have it. The are blood, semen, precum also called pre-seminal fluid , vaginal fluid, breast milk only for mother-to-child transmission , and rectal fluids, also called anal mucous. Notice fluids not on this list, including spit, sweat, and tears. There are some main acts that can result in fluid and site coming together, resulting in a potential infection. HIV positive mothers can also transmit to their babies through blood during pregnancy and when they give birth, or during breastfeeding through breastmilk. How Do I Know If I Have It? To know your status, you have to get tested. These are usually described as an extremely bad flu — fever, a sore throat, headache, achy muscles and joints, and rash. How Easy Is It To Get? When someone first gets infected, the virus goes all spring break on your body while your immune system scrambles to retaliate. During this time of primary HIV infection, you have a lot of copies of the virus in your system, which means you are. With proper medication and care, you can get the number of these copies very low, reducing the likelihood of transmission significantly. How Can I Protect Myself? The only foolproof way of not getting an STD is not having sex in the first place. Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis Possibly the most exciting and definitely the newest prevention tool available is , or PrEP. PrEP is kind of like the hormonal birth control pill but against HIV transmission, not pregnancy so … sperm transmission? PrEP is a pill you take every day, and if you do that you can be protected from HIV by. Post-Exposure Prophylaxis If PrEP is like the birth control of HIV prevention, then PEP is like , or the morning after pill. HIV used to be way more commonly passed between people who use injectable drugs, but through this has been significantly diminished. How Can My HIV+ Partner Help? This is called , and it works because the less of the virus someone has in their system, the harder it is for them to transmit it to someone else. So if your partner takes their medication and gets their viral load count down, they are also helping your health! How Can I Help My HIV+ Partner? Something you can do more pragmatically is help them get into treatment if they want your help. If you have it, you have to take medication every day or sometimes more than once a day and deal with having a chronic condition. The reality is, many people live with HIV for many many years, and many of those people are. These couples are called because of their + and - statuses, which is pretty cute. Pairing in this way has worked for many couples and it can work for you too! Want more of Bustle's Sex and Relationships coverage? Check out our new podcast, I Want It That Way , which delves into the difficult and downright dirty parts of a relationship, and find more on our Soundcloud page.
