Sasha, I’ve been dating a guy for a couple months and things are going great. We haven’t talked about being exclusive yet. I’m on the pill so I decided to stop using a condom after a couple months, but he told me the other day that he’s seeing another girl and is also having sex with without a condom too. I feel really crappy about this and am scared that we didn’t use protection now. What should I do? When should I stop using a condom? I’m really out of the loop when it comes to this.
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Well, the first thing you need to do is march yourself into your doctor’s office and get some tests done. You gotta be proactive about this now because the last thing you want is to end up with some nasty sh-t, so L, get that sorted STAT.
Once you’ve dealt with that then I think you need to set a new dome-on/dome-off policy for yourself. All too often terrifying articles like this one come up and, f-ck, is it ever a wake-up call. Now while nothing is ever 100% safe when you’re having sex with someone, there are two crucial things you need to ask yourself before you ride that pony bareback:
1. What’s the status of your relationship? If you’re not in a monogamous relationship then don’t skip the condom. Look, I know it’s more fun without one, but you know what’s not fun? Dying. So yeah, unless you know for sure that you're in an exclusive relationship, it’s not worth the risk.
2. Have you been tested for STDs and HIV? Plain and simple you need to know that the goods are good. Both people need to be responsible to check their sh-t out in between partners, and L, if you can’t have an adult conversation about this, then you shouldn’t even be entertaining the idea of not using a condom, let alone slapping skins.
I know it’s easy to get caught up in the moment, but things can get scary real fast, so I guess the moral of this story is to put a bag on it until you can really trust a dude.
Thanks for writing in and keep your LIFE + STYLE questions coming to [email protected]
