Stories
I got an STI the first time I had sex (anonymous)
"It was April Fool’s Day when my boyfriend told me he (now we) had genital warts. I laughed for thirty seconds until I realized he wasn’t joking.
He was my boyfriend for three months before I decided I was ready to have sex with him for the first time. He had had other partners before me so I asked him to get a STD and HIV test. He respectfully obliged and came back with a clean bill of health.
We hit the sheets, worry free.
A month later, my boyfriend went to get a little white bump checked out on his penis. The doctor casually told him it was a genital wart and proceeded to remove it with liquid nitrogen.
Half an hour later, after the April Fools fiasco conversation with my boyfriend, I realized that what I had assumed were shaving bumps in my pubic region were actually genital warts.
This put our relationship out for a rocky start, but we worked through it. We learned that Genital Warts is the most common sexually transmitted infection, and that 1 in 3 students on our university campus were infected. We learned that me having genital warts did not mean I would develop cervical cancer and that I would not pass the HPV virus onto my future children.
Well, that was a relief. But I still had a knot in my stomach that made me feel dirty. It took me eight months to be able to look at myself in the mirror, nine months to be able to have relaxed sex with my boyfriend, and twelve months to be able to masturbate again.
It took me two years to realize I wasn’t dirty. Through reading online discussion posts about people dealing with genital warts, sharing my worries and feeling with my boyfriend, and confiding in a few trustworthy friends, I learned to love myself again. I realized that STI’s (especially genital warts) are extremely common. Chances are that one in four of my friends has or has had a sexually transmitted infection."
Source: http://everydayfeminism.com
You practice!
Do you think it is shameful to have an STI – what does the writer of the story think and why? What would you do if you thought your partner or you had an STI?