Living Stories: Home page

Intimate relationships

Play MP3 audio clip

Catherine: There has been this opening up of all the boundaries; you can do other things without putting yourself at risk. That's why it is so horrendous; that if somebody doesn't ask you, they are therefore responsible if they contract HIV off you. That is so wrong. I know it, in my heart, that it's so wrong. You are responsible for not opening your mouth and saying it: 'I am HIV positive. If you want to walk away, that's fine. I totally respect you for that, because if I could, I would.'

Play MP3 audio clip

Dave: I was going out with a guy and he told me he was negative. I didn't tell him I was positive at the beginning, and I found it really difficult to tell him the further I got into the relationship. Even though we were using protection, I never told him, and my friend was telling me: 'But you've got to tell him anyway!' And when I told him, he'd been to the doctor's because he wasn't feeling well, and he came back from the doctor's and he'd had a HIV test, and that had come back positive. It wasn't until later on that I found out that he was having unsafe sex in other areas, so he could have picked it up from there. I'm not trying to make excuses if it was me, but I was taking all the precautions. That really did knock my sex drive and everything, after that, for a couple of years really badly.

Play MP3 audio clip

David: At first, we continued as normal because we'd always used contraceptives. But then it became more and more mechanical and difficult and also my wife was more and more worried. And so gradually it tailed off, and really we became celibate from about the late Eighties and early Nineties onwards. We just gave up a sex life in that sense. That may be said to have improved our marriage in some ways, because sex can be quite a difficult situation - sometimes, not always. It has been difficult, obviously, but we have remained celibate for many years now. And I know that's true of several other haemophiliacs, because they've told me.

Play MP3 audio clip

Derek: So I told her. I told her I was a HIV positive, and her basic reaction was, 'Is that all?' She said, 'I thought you were gay or something.' And that was amazing; she didn't care about it, and that was such a relief. That was an amazing night. She's an amazing woman.

Play MP3 audio clip

Haydn: I think we both realised what they were going to tell us. They related that the tests had come back positive and it was very emotional. Very. I sobbed my heart out. It's strange when things happen to you; you deal with them and you try and instil in people around you that everything's okay and that it's going to be fine. But when it happens to your wife and you know that it's come via you, the feelings of guilt and blaming yourself are just awesome...

Play MP3 audio clip

Joseph: Each time I'd made a new relationship, in the beginning they said that they understood the issues; they felt confident with them; they felt strong that they could deal with them. And when the relationship had come to an end, they would all say that they didn't have enough information; they didn't have the understanding; the absolute...the depth of the impact that it would have on them. I'd decided I wasn't going to have a relationship again. I couldn't handle it, it was too stressful. I didn't want to drag someone else into my nightmare, if you like.

Play MP3 audio clip

Mick: I was very rarely on my own without a girlfriend, but they wouldn't last more than two or three weeks. Because as soon as they got too close, it was like - no, that's it now, bye-bye! There's no point having a long term relationship because I'm not going to get married, I can't have kids, I'm going to be dead. So I'd just have my two or three weeks of fun and then...I wouldn't let anybody get close to me at all.

Play MP3 audio clip

Owen: It screwed up my sex life, because I didn't dare have sex with anyone. And when I did, I had to get really, really drunk to have sex with them, because I wanted to tell them I was positive and I didn't. So I used to end up just getting drunk and not having sex.

Play MP3 audio clip

Robert: Telling people you've got HIV can kind of de-sex you, and I feel I stop becoming a sexual option for some women, if they know I'm positive. Therefore that's one of the few circumstances that I'm kind of quite reticent about telling people, because I want them to know me a bit as a human being and if they fancy me to remember they fancy me when I tell them, rather than them allocating me to a category of 'this person's not an option to sleep with or go out with'.