The Risks of Relationships

Kat Wilder posted a blog last week about dating someone with cancer and I was nodding along with her as I read it. She challenges her friend (and the rest of us) to consider “safety” in relationships.  She asks whether knowing someone has cancer is a reason to avoid getting involved. I got to thinking beyond dating someone with cancer to dating someone with HIV. What would and wouldn’t be “safe” about that? There are the obvious worries about HIV transmission of course, but they can be managed with safer sex. Many serodiscordant couples (one HIV positive, one not) have been together for years, and the uninfected partner has stayed that way. It’s totally possible.

Loving someone with cancer and loving someone with HIV? When I first started working in HIV prevention and support many moons ago, my aunt told me that cancer was once as stigmatized as HIV. No one wanted to talk about it, no one knew much about how people got it, and those who had it were ostracized and died alone. Sound familiar?

Cancer isn’t stigma-free these days, but it has improved, thankfully. We know now that cancer isn’t contagious. And you can’t get it from having sex with someone (although HPV infection can lead to cancer). HIV is preventable through safer sex, which is a wise idea anyway if you’re looking to avoid STIs in general.

So you can manage the physical risks of dating someone with HIV. Would you take the emotional risk?

These days, if people have access to treatment, their lives may stretch as long as those of the uninfected, potentially changing the emotional landscape of loving someone with HIV. Their life may last longer than a partner with cancer. As an HIV doctor once said, “I can’t tell people how long their lives might be [after HIV diagnosis]. You just don’t know.”

There are no guarantees, but there are all kinds of emotional and physical realities to consider when getting into a relationship. As the saying goes, that’s life. 

- Janet  

Check This Out: When Opposites Attract: an Exploration of Serodiscordant Relationships

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