Question
Does my partner’s new HIV diagnosis mean I will catch HIV?
23 June 2011. Related: All topics, HIV transmission, Newly diagnosed, Sero different couples, Support.
I recently found out that my partner is HIV+. We have been in a long term same sex relationship now for many years. Obviously my partner has not always been faithfull and has admitted that he had unprotected sex with another man.
Although my partner has hurt me with the infidelity I beleive that in time we could still be happy together. My concerns lie with the risks involved with continuing with a sexual relationship. I am finding it difficult to find any firm information for people in relationships of mixed HIV status. I know that the odds of contracting HIV can be low and that protected sex reduces these odds again, but from what I read the odds are that eventually the virus will be passed on. Is this true?
Have any studies been done in recent years that give any facts about continuing a safe sexual relationship between two men in these circumstances?
Answer
You raise two issues that are easier to talk about if you try to keep them separate while you are dealing with this difficult situation.
The first is relatively easy. There are plenty of websites that explain safe sex where the risk of transmission is zero. Let me know if you need links or have specific questions. Â If you have not used condoms in your relationship until now, this may be something you now need to consider, depending on the type of sex you enjoy.
There are probably more HIV-positive people in relationships with HIV-negative partners than there are with HIV-positive ones. I have never come across negative partners who have a resignation that they will one day catch HIV from their partner – if anything, knowing their partners status makes them more careful in their sex. Several studies of sero-different relationships have shown that when a negative partner does becomes positive later, their HIV positive partner is often not the source of the new infection.
If you decide to stay negative, you will stay negative. This is why safe sex works. HIV is a difficult virus to catch and taking care to reduce your risks will keep you negative.
The second involves issues of trust and blame and some of this is already showing in the language you use. Using faithfulness, admitting and infidelity are judgemental words where you are taking the role of the injured person and blaming your partner. I don’t know why your partners needed or wanted other partners, but surveys of the general population show that sexual monogamy during a lifetime is extremely rare. It is also a difficult state to aspire to. There are lots of reasons why people have sex outside their main relationship and it doesn’t necessarily mean they love their main partner any less.
Your partner has been unlucky by catching HIV, which is actually a difficult virus to catch. He may have caught this from oral sex with a partner who was themselves recently infected and didn’t know their own status. I only use this as an example to show how difficult it is to know with certainly how and when an infection occurred, if there has been several risks, and that I’m sure your partner didn’t set out to become positive. The underlying reasons behind this are more important to understand in taking your relationship forward.
You partner is already likely to be feeling bad enough for his current situation. He will have to come to terms with this by looking forward now and dealing with it. Luckily, treatment, when he needs it, should take care of his health long into old age.
Just as importantly, several recent studies have also highlighted the dramatic impact that treatment has on dramatically reducing the risk of transmission. [1, 2]
Many people (both positive and negative), even when using condoms, find the knowledge that transmission is extremely unlikely with an undetectable viral load, greatly removes the residual stress of small theoretical risks of transmission.
This is probably all for the future though as talking about the second issue if probably more important that the practicalities of the first.
Good luck with whatever you decide and I hope things work out well for you and your partner.
Please let us know if we can help further, or again in the future.
References
1. Donnell D et al. ART and risk of heterosexual HIV-1 transmission in HIV-1 serodiscordant African couples: a multinational prospective study. 17th CROI 2010. Oral abstract 136.
http://www.retroconference.org/2010/Abstracts/39222.htm
See report here.
2. The HPTN 052 Study: Preventing Sexual Transmission of HIV with Anti-HIV Drugs
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/QA/Pages/HPTN052qa.aspx
Hi JoJo
This is not an either/or situation. Just that i-Base is predominantly focused on treatment and that most requests are from people about their own health.
It is just as important that you have support from the clinic in terms of counselling from a health advisor about your own health and your own issues. We are limited in the help we can suggest, but you don’t have to do this on your own.
We often get emails from couples where one partner has been recently diagnosed and there is clearly a lot of issues to work through. These include issues of trust again where this has involved sex with other partners when this was not part of the relationship.
I hope that you both find a way through this, but asking to speak to a health advisor or counsellor might be a good place to start.
On all these forums it seems that all care, concern, understanding, and giving goes to the people who contracted HIV and not the HIV- partner. I love my husband who has recently tested HIV+ and I hope we’ll be together forever (there willl be some mending of the relationship to do), but trying to find some support online is difficult as there’s almost nothing to help, guide, concern, the HIV-partner in this mess. I’m sure I’ll be blasted from all the PC folk out there on being so damned selfish, but “What about me?”
Hey, that’s pwouerfl. Thanks for the news.
No. Treatment reduces viral load and increases this person’s CD4 count (immune strength).
Continuous treatment is needed to keep the virus at very low levels. This is not a cure. The person is still HIV-positive.
if a person with hiv aids uses continuous hiv drugs will he be cured?