Sexually Transmitted Diseases / Question
Published: June 11, 2008
Dear TeenHealthFX,
my best friend is 18 and is still a virgin which i think is great! she always wanted to wait til she was married because that is important to her, but i find her talking about wanting to do things with her new boyfriend. i know that is totally up to her and all but i just have one problem with the situation... this guy is her first boyfriend and i found out that he has been with 14 other people. i am quite concerned because she does not want to ask him to go get tested... she said that one of his last gf's asked him if he ever got tested for anything and he broke up with her, im guessing because he was offended. i know that he is really important to her, especially since he is her first boyfriend and all... but shes afraid to ask him to get tested... she thinks that that is mean to ask... i told her that its really important that he get tested... especially since the odds of 1 in 5 people have herpes... since hes been with 14, the chances hes slept with someone who has had it almost triples! he thinks its normal to have that many sexual partners... once again i am quite concerned for her... any way, i would ask him, but its kind of not my business... and my boyfriend said hes not afraid to ask him, but once again, that is something i think should be kept between my best friend and her boyfriend. i am just afraid that she'll do something with him and regret it later if he does have an std just because shes too afraid to ask him. do you have any advice in a good way for her to break it to him... it would greatly be appreciated if you could respond back to this :)
Signed: Friend Thinks It's Mean To Ask BF To Get Tested
Dear Friend Thinks It's Mean To Ask BF To Get Tested,
TeenHealthFX appreciates your concern for your friend, but agrees that this is something best kept between her and her boyfriend. You can certainly educate her about the importance of practicing safer sex and getting tested, you can encourage her to stand up for her physical health with her boyfriend, and you can recommend that she talk with a healthcare professional about how to handle this and safeguard her well-being – but in the end, she is responsible for making her own choices and for dealing with the consequences of those choices.
What you can do?
- Print out statistics and facts about STDs and STD testing from TeenHealthFX, Planned Parenthood, and the CDC websites and give them to your friend to read.
- Keep reminding your friend that her long-term physical well-being is more important than her boyfriend’s reaction to her request that he be tested.
- Continue to reinforce with your friend that she is not being mean, she is being responsible, smart, and loving towards herself by demanding that he be tested before they are physically intimate with one another.
- Recommend that you friend speak with the school nurse, her primary care physician, her gynecologist, or an adolescent medicine specialist so she can be educated about practicing safer sex, with an emphasis on learning how to protect herself from transmitting an STD.
How can your friend phrase her request?
- “I care about you, but I also care about myself. And I’m not willing to risk my physical well-being by not taking the proper precautions before being sexually active. That means practicing safer sex and ensuring through testing that my partner and I do not have any STDs.”
- “I know this is a sensitive topic for you, but it’s really important to me that you get tested for STDs before we are sexually active. I hope you can understand and respect how important it is for me to be safe and take care of myself.”
- “Asking you to get tested has nothing to do with how I see you or how I feel about you. If you need to get tested or if you do have an STD, I will still care about you and respect you. My feelings and view of you won’t change – what will change is that we’ll need to some things differently to get you treatment and to ensure this doesn’t get passed on to me.”
What can your friend say if he puts up a fight about getting tested?
- “I’m sorry that you’re offended by this request, but honestly, I’m offended that you wouldn’t want to do whatever you can to ensure that I stay physically healthy.”
- “If this request means the end of our relationship, then I guess you don’t care about me and about us as much as you said you did.”
- “Instead of getting angry or threatening to break up with me, can you please talk to me about what is so upsetting to you about my asking you to do this?”
- “I believe that part of being in a caring relationship is each person making decisions that are caring towards themselves and the other person. That is what I’m taking about here – making sure that we help and protect ourselves and each other. And if you can’t see that that is what this is about, and we don’t have such an important goal in common, then maybe we’re not the right match for one another.”
If your friend doesn't have a doctor and lives in northern
Signed: TeenHealthFX
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