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Jun. 9th, 2002 12:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaToday I gave my "dating with HIV" talk at the heterosexuals with HIV conference. I started out by spilling a glass of water all over my dress, which I've always thought is the ideal eye-catching, confidence-building way to open a presentation in front of 80-plus perfect strangers. It did earn me a round of applause later on in the talk, when I successfully drank from the replacement glass someone had brought me. So yay for diminished expectations, or something like that.
I had a Seven Point Plan:
1. Love yourself first. Before you look for acceptance from a partner, work on accepting yourself - including overcoming the fear that you're a diseased and unlovable pariah. You need to come to terms with your own HIV, and recover (or develop) a sense of yourself as a valuable relationship partner. This may mean you're not ready to date right now.
2. Find your new priorities. Consider whether your list of what you look for in a partner has changed, or ought to have changed, since you found out you have HIV. Here I talked about the pros and cons of only dating other HIV+ people, and also about shifting from a focus on external qualities (like attractiveness or popularity) to internal qualities (like compassion and open-mindedness).
3. Focus on the long term. Don't think in terms of how you can find a partner right now. Make friends with people first, so that you'll have a foundation of trust, liking, and respect when the time comes to disclose your HIV status and approach them romantically. Standard dating venues, like singles bars, are not the place to make judgments about whether it's safe to tell someone your status - so they're not good places to look for partners.
4. Disclose early. I spent more time talking about the mechanics of why, when, and how to disclose your HIV status to a prospective romantic partner - and on what to expect afterward - than on any other part of the talk. I think it's important to talk about it before there's been any romantic interaction - even if that interaction doesn't carry a risk of HIV transmission. And a big part of the why is that keeping secrets is fundamentally unhealthy - not just for the relationship, but for the individual's physical condition.
5. Slow things down. Give the other person plenty of time to get used to what you've told them and what you're suggesting. Remember that it probably took you a long time to come to terms with HIV - they're going to have to go through the same process. Don't be discouraged if you don't get your ideal reaction immediately - hang in there, stay friends, give them time.
6. Communicate and educate. The more you work to increase HIV awareness and understanding in your community, the easier it will be for you to move socially through that community. I also talked about ways to help your partner or prospective partner learn about HIV.
7. Be creative and flexible. Especially if you're in a serodiscordant relationship (one HIV+ person, one HIV- person), try to expand your definition of romantic interaction, and of sex, to include more activities with a low risk of transmission. Think about incorporating sex toys or acting out fantasies.
I mentioned, with that last, that I was kind of embarrassed to talk about that sort of thing in a public talk. And then I immediately felt like an idiot. But someone came up to me after the talk and said, "I liked the way you said you were embarrassed to talk about sex, and then you did it anyway." And I realized that I had modeled two very good things: (1) it's okay to be embarrassed, and to say that you're embarrassed. (2) Embarrassment doesn't have to stop you from doing things that you think are important.
Lots of comments and questions afterward. One question from two different people, that I'll want to incorporate into the talk next time: "How do you deal with fears about infecting someone? How do you handle that moral issue?" Some great comments from a serodiscordant couple: "It's amazing - you talked about every single thing we went through." And a heartbreaking conversation with a woman from Tennessee who'd been widowed by HIV, and couldn't imagine ever wanting to date again. I wound up telling her that I myself had had a partner die, and reassuring her that it was okay to stay with her grief for as long as doing so felt right to her.
It was a great experience. I expect I'll be asked to do this again. And I feel good about that. This is a terribly hard topic, and it means a lot to me that they thought I had credibility to discuss it.
I had a Seven Point Plan:
1. Love yourself first. Before you look for acceptance from a partner, work on accepting yourself - including overcoming the fear that you're a diseased and unlovable pariah. You need to come to terms with your own HIV, and recover (or develop) a sense of yourself as a valuable relationship partner. This may mean you're not ready to date right now.
2. Find your new priorities. Consider whether your list of what you look for in a partner has changed, or ought to have changed, since you found out you have HIV. Here I talked about the pros and cons of only dating other HIV+ people, and also about shifting from a focus on external qualities (like attractiveness or popularity) to internal qualities (like compassion and open-mindedness).
3. Focus on the long term. Don't think in terms of how you can find a partner right now. Make friends with people first, so that you'll have a foundation of trust, liking, and respect when the time comes to disclose your HIV status and approach them romantically. Standard dating venues, like singles bars, are not the place to make judgments about whether it's safe to tell someone your status - so they're not good places to look for partners.
4. Disclose early. I spent more time talking about the mechanics of why, when, and how to disclose your HIV status to a prospective romantic partner - and on what to expect afterward - than on any other part of the talk. I think it's important to talk about it before there's been any romantic interaction - even if that interaction doesn't carry a risk of HIV transmission. And a big part of the why is that keeping secrets is fundamentally unhealthy - not just for the relationship, but for the individual's physical condition.
5. Slow things down. Give the other person plenty of time to get used to what you've told them and what you're suggesting. Remember that it probably took you a long time to come to terms with HIV - they're going to have to go through the same process. Don't be discouraged if you don't get your ideal reaction immediately - hang in there, stay friends, give them time.
6. Communicate and educate. The more you work to increase HIV awareness and understanding in your community, the easier it will be for you to move socially through that community. I also talked about ways to help your partner or prospective partner learn about HIV.
7. Be creative and flexible. Especially if you're in a serodiscordant relationship (one HIV+ person, one HIV- person), try to expand your definition of romantic interaction, and of sex, to include more activities with a low risk of transmission. Think about incorporating sex toys or acting out fantasies.
I mentioned, with that last, that I was kind of embarrassed to talk about that sort of thing in a public talk. And then I immediately felt like an idiot. But someone came up to me after the talk and said, "I liked the way you said you were embarrassed to talk about sex, and then you did it anyway." And I realized that I had modeled two very good things: (1) it's okay to be embarrassed, and to say that you're embarrassed. (2) Embarrassment doesn't have to stop you from doing things that you think are important.
Lots of comments and questions afterward. One question from two different people, that I'll want to incorporate into the talk next time: "How do you deal with fears about infecting someone? How do you handle that moral issue?" Some great comments from a serodiscordant couple: "It's amazing - you talked about every single thing we went through." And a heartbreaking conversation with a woman from Tennessee who'd been widowed by HIV, and couldn't imagine ever wanting to date again. I wound up telling her that I myself had had a partner die, and reassuring her that it was okay to stay with her grief for as long as doing so felt right to her.
It was a great experience. I expect I'll be asked to do this again. And I feel good about that. This is a terribly hard topic, and it means a lot to me that they thought I had credibility to discuss it.
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Far be it from me to never state the obvious....
Date: 2002-06-09 11:22 am (UTC)The seven point plan is quite good advice that could be used for *any* relationship.
Have I told you lately you are brilliant? :-)
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Date: 2002-06-09 11:52 am (UTC)Beyond that, I can only agree with Fernblat. You are amazing.
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Date: 2002-06-09 06:54 pm (UTC)That is so cool. Yes, yes, yes, those are very important things to model!
"One question from two different people, that I'll want to incorporate into the talk next time: 'How do you deal with fears about infecting someone? How do you handle that moral issue?'"
I know it's a different situation, but I might have some small useful commentary to offer on that one, seeing as I have a severely immuno-compromised partner and I have herpes, which we intend not to be transmitted.... and the "fears... moral issue" stuff is definitely a topic where I have spent major time on this one. If it'd be useful, lemme know.