There are no absolute guarantees when it comes to having safe sex between two people, but you can enjoy safer sex if you’re careful to follow the guidelines that the experts have developed.If you can’t remember the following ten tips, then write them down with a felt marker on your wrist every time you’re in a situation where you may have sex. Do this until they’re indelibly etched in your brain — right next to the spot where the law of always backing up your computer files sits.
1. Learn to Say No
No one ever died from sexual frustration, but you can’t say the same thing about sexually transmitted diseases.
Just because you haven’t had sex in a long time and the opportunity presents itself doesn’t mean that you should give in to those urges. The less you know about a person, the greater the likelihood that he or she can infect you with a disease. So learn to say no to casual sex.
Yes, you can try to protect yourself, but you have no 100 percent sure way of doing that. Remember that I’m talking about your life here. Isn’t it worth being cautious?
2. Limit Your Number of Partners
Have you ever seen the trick that the clowns do in the circus with the little car? The car drives around the main ring, looking like it has barely enough room for one person inside; the next thing you know, 25 clowns, big feet and all, come pouring out. Well, you have to conjure up that exact image when you look at a potential partner. The more sexual partners a person has had, the more trouble that spells for you.
When you have sex with someone, not just the two of you are in the bed. Hiding under the covers is every partner with whom that person has everhad sex, and the partners of those partners. Although you may not be able to see their large red noses glowing in the dark, you can be sure that any viruses those partners may have left behind inside the warm, naked body lying next to you are making a beeline for any openings in your body.
To a virus, you’re nothing more than a host — the perfect place to reproduce and multiply — and if the virus destroys you, well, all I can say is that its conscience isn’t as well developed as its ability to reproduce.
3. Don’t Rely Solely on Your Instincts
Some people have honesty written all over their faces. You just know that if you lend them your car, you’ll get it back exactly at the time they say they’ll bring it back. But what if they have a split personality, and the half of them who’s the thief takes off with your car for parts unknown? You trusted your instincts and you got burned, that’s what.
The problem with trusting your instincts when it comes to sexually transmitted diseases is that many people out there really believe that they’re disease free when, in fact, they’re not. Some sexually transmitted diseases invade a host’s body and cause absolutely no symptoms, so when these people tell you they’ve never had any diseases, they give the appearance of being absolutely honest because they are being absolutely honest. The difficulty that your never-failing instincts face in such a situation is that these people’s honesty isn’t worth a hoot. They have a dark side that they’re unaware of having. They truly believe that they can’t infect you, but in fact they truly can.
When dealing with sexually transmitted diseases, it’s much better to be safe than sorry. Instead of trusting your instincts, follow the rules of safer sex. In the long run, you won’t regret it.
4. Never Dull Your Senses When You’re with Strangers
I often recommend to people that they have a glass of wine or two to help them loosen up, which can then lead to better sex. But that suggestion only applies when the two people involved are already a couple. In certain situations, any dulling of the senses caused by alcohol or drugs can prove very dangerous.
Many people have wound up having sex because they were high, under circumstances that they would never have said yes to had they been sober. If you’re in your local pub with a few friends and you have a few beers too many, the likelihood of the situation turning into a sexual scene is slight. But if you get invited to a party at somebody’s house and you don’t know the host that well or many of the guests, and you then start to imbibe too much, you may regret the consequences.
If a bedroom is just down the hall, you may well find yourself in it, with your clothes off and somebody doing some very intimate things with you. Under such circumstances, you won’t be thinking safer sex, assuming you’re capable of thinking at all. And the same goes for the person you’re with, too.
To practice safer sex you have to be responsible. And to be responsible, you have to have all, or at least most, of your faculties operating. So if the situation calls for keeping your wits about you, order a soft drink — or one of those nonalcoholic beers, if you don’t want anybody to realize that you intend to remain sober.
5. Discuss Safer Sex in Advance
If you’re dating someone and the relationship is moving forward, don’t wait to talk about safer sex. The closer you get to the point where having sex is just on the horizon, the harder delaying going ahead will be.
Certainly if you already have your clothes off, it’s far too late to suddenly think about safer sex. But I believe that you should have that safer sex discussion long before you reach that point. If you plan to insist that this potential partner get tested for AIDS, then you can expect a six-month waiting period before you can engage in intercourse. So the sooner you bring the topic to the table, the sooner you can begin having sex.
I’m sure that you find many aspects of a person’s character, such as his sense of honesty or her ability to give of herself, so important that you wouldn’t consider getting involved with that person without knowing them. So just add sexual history to that list, and you’ll wind up a lot safer.
6. Use Condoms
Condoms don’t offer absolute protection against sexually transmitted diseases. If used improperly, they can leak. Once in a while, they break. And certain viruses, such as hepatitis B, can actually pass through the latex.But compared to having intercourse without a condom, they’re like the brick walls the third little piggy used to keep the wolf away.
You have no valid excuse not to use a condom. Men don’t lose their ability to have an orgasm by wearing a condom. They may like sex better without a condom — I can’t deny that — but having intercourse using a condom is still better than not having intercourse at all. When it comes to safer sex, youcan’t make any exceptions to this rule.
To use a condom, you have to have one with you. Although young men have long stuck one in their wallets for “emergencies,” you should know that heat and age affect condoms, so make sure that any condom you use is fresh. But in this day and age, not just men should carry condoms. Any woman who is sexually active should be prepared to keep herself safe, not only from an unintended pregnancy, but from sexually transmitted diseases as well.
7. Develop a Relationship Before You Have Sex
Some people get paranoid about safer sex, and I don’t blame them for taking every precaution imaginable. But many people just don’t give much thought to safer sex. If they’re in a special situation, if the stars are shining very brightly, if the chemistry is just perfect, and no condom is available, well, they may give in to the moment. Scolding someone who does that is pointless; face it, sex is part of human nature. None of us is perfect, and everyone gives in to temptation now and then, whether it involves a moonlit night or a container of Häagen-Dazs.
The key to safer sex is to not have sex with anyone until you have developed a relationship with that person. If you get to know someone really well, if you’ve been dating for a while, if you’ve had long talks about life and love and know their sexual history — if, after all that, you really believe that having sex (using a condom, of course) is reasonably safe for the two of you, then you may decide to go ahead.
Sadly, some people are liars, and every day they infect innocent people with dreadful diseases. Even a marriage license is no guarantee against sexually transmitted diseases. But you have no absolute guarantees in life, and every day you must make choices, the outcome of which you can’t know in advance. You can’t let the unknown paralyze you entirely. Sometimes you just have to take a leap. However, if you take every possible precaution, the odds of success are a lot higher.
8. Don’t Engage in Risky Behavior
The chance of passing on HIV during anal sex is greater than during other types of sex. Unprotected oral sex is not safer sex. Having sex with someone you meet at a bar or bathhouse is dangerous. Going to a sex club is far from risk free. Wife-swapping does not promote good health. Sharing needles is an invitation to sharing HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Most people don’t even think about trying such risky behavior, but others are attracted to living on the edge. These people seem to dare the fates to strike them down, and, more often than not, the fates oblige.
At the time that you engage in risky behavior, a certain thrill may come with the moment. But when you’re lying in a hospital dying, that thrill won’t be a happy memory but a nightmare that you’ll live through over and over until the end.
If you can’t keep yourself from going to a gay bar or bathhouse, masturbate while watching others, but don’t do anything risky. If seeing what goes on at a sex club is too much of a temptation for you to resist, go with a partner and don’t have sex with anyone else. If you’re a drug addict, go get help right this minute.
You can find the willpower to avoid risky behavior — I know it. If you can’t do it by yourself, then go for help.
9. Don’t Forget about the Other STDs
Although AIDS has grabbed all the headlines, AIDS is only one of many sexually transmitted diseases. Most of these STDs have been around for hundreds of years.
Some think that Columbus may have brought syphilis back to Spain with him from the New World. Whatever the exact method of its spread throughout the world, syphilis has plagued mankind for a long time, and it killed many people before medical science found a cure.
Some forms of syphilis and gonorrhea have become resistant to the normal types and doses of antibiotics, which means that they’re no longer illnesses that you can just shrug off. Hepatitis B is much more contagious than most STDs; luckily, you can get a vaccine that prevents you from catching it.
Doctors have no vaccine against herpes, nor do they have a cure. Usually, the partner of the person who has herpes ends up getting the disease as well.
Some STDs, such as chlamydia, are raging across the country. And now that cervical cancer has been linked to HPV infection, women need to remember that having sex with a high-risk partner can put them at higher risk for developing cancer.
Although you may be with somebody who you suppose doesn’t have AIDS — and you may even be right — that doesn’t mean that you’re safe from catching an STD. The sexual scene is a bit of a war zone, so be careful. Please.
10. Don’t Sell Your Other Options Short
If the main reason that you have sex is to have a baby, then intercourse is surely the only way for you to go. But if you seek pleasure and not progeny, then you have plenty of other ways to get sexual satisfaction without undertaking the risks of intercourse.
What makes intercourse dangerous is the exchange of bodily fluids, which can contain viruses of various sorts. But orgasms don’t depend on an exchange of fluids. You and your partner can both wear full rubber body suits, so not even a drop of sweat would be exchanged, and still give each other orgasms.
Hands and fingers are wonderfully agile and can give a lot of pleasure. (Oral sex, while safer than intercourse, can’t be considered a form of safer sex because people exchange bodily fluids.) If you want to be creative, you can even substitute your big toe. A man can rub his penis between a woman’s breasts, and a vibrator can give fabulous orgasms without passing on a drop of anything liquid.
If you really feel the need for sexual release, but you don’t know the person all that well, don’t sell these safer-sex practices short. You can get sexual satisfaction without having any regrets later on.
