Читать книгу Sex For Dummies - Pierre Lehu A., Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer - Страница 123

If the two of you love each other, asking whether your partner has been tested for STIs represents a minor bump in the road (unless he or she admits to having one or more diseases, in which case you have some thinking to do). But if you’re only casual acquaintances, there’ll be a strong temptation to skip this embarrassing topic. If you’re sexually aroused, that part of your brain that you rely on for checks and balances will get overwhelmed by that part ruled by your libido. You’ll be much more likely to roll the dice, sort of the way you might drop a piece of candy on the floor and then kiss it up to God before popping it into your mouth.

So how do you initiate this conversation? The first rule: it mustn’t be right before engaging in sexual behavior. If you’re sufficiently aroused you won’t even bother to listen to the answer but just assume it’s okay. And yet, this is a difficult question to bring up out of the blue, in part because if you do, it will make the person you’re dating think that you want to have sex.

I see two approaches, timing wise:

 One is to ask the question on a first date. You’re asking about hobbies, work, travel so why not “Have you ever been tested for sexually transmitted diseases?” It’s an awkward question no matter when you raise it but at least on a first date your date probably won’t jump to the conclusion that you want to go to bed right away. And if that happens, it’s pretty easy to deflect that possibility.

 If you’re asking the question after you’ve made up your mind that you do want to have sex, an easier way to bring up the topic is with a lead-in. Find an article about STIs (a Google search will probably lead to a lot more than you could ever read through), and then you can bring up the article or the statistics you just read, and that will lead into the topic of testing.

Or else, if you haven’t been tested in a while, or never been tested, get yourself tested and then you can announce the result — hopefully negative — and that will almost force your date to talk about his or her testing status.

If you’ve tested positive for a disease, then you’re better off bringing up the subject sooner rather than later. Of course if you can sense in the first few minutes of a date that you’d never want to have sex with this person, then it would be useless to raise this issue but if you’re interested then don’t wait so long that you could get your heart broken in case this person ends up ghosting you after you reveal this about yourself.