Rishi, 31, NJ [Male]
I dated a girl and we had sex. A few weeks later, she tells me she has an STI. I really didn’t know how to react. I questioned her if she had slept with someone else and decided to ignore the problem. She and I didn’t speak again. I just couldn’t deal. I was in my 20s. I’m American, Indian, Jain…. grew up in New Jersey. Having any sexual disease was just unimaginable. It didn’t fit into my idea of what was possible. I just couldn’t believe that I could have an STI. When the next girl I had sex with told me the same thing, I couldn’t ignore the problem. It turned out that it was a bacterial infection, where men don’t get any symptoms. The whole time, I infected two women, and my first thought was to question them. To this day, I’m grateful that it was only a bacterial infection, and my doctor could cure it. What if it was a virus? I could have ruined the lives of two women and my own. Needless to say, I never had sex without a condom again… well… until I found the woman I eventually married. Even then, she and I agreed to get tested for everything before having sex without a condom. I’ll never stop being grateful that what I got was curable and that nobody’s life was permanently affected.
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