Music now streams on demand instead of playing on vinyl and the Dewey Decimal System has been replaced by Google, but the art of finding love is still as basic as ever. You don’t need me to tell you that looking for love can be the most exasperating, often humiliating, and most certainly maddening quests of your life. Often, the harder you try, the more hopelessly desperate the situation may feel (and the more desperate you'll appear). For many people with HIV, it might seem easier to quit while you're ahead. But however frustrating finding love may be, the ability to find it isn’t made any more difficult by HIV. Living with HIV and, more importantly, being open and confident with your status isn’t exactly a walk in the park. However, neither is having a lazy eye, being born without a limb, being overweight, or even being insecure about the size and shape of your body or any of its parts. When dating, HIV is an obstacle to overcome, not for your partner, but for you. If you are constantly paranoid about how others may judge you, then finding a match is going to be pretty damn difficult. You might even settle for the wrong person just because he or she is willing to date someone living with HIV. This is not the kind of love you want, but it is exactly the kind of love you will attract until you stop judging yourself and realize that HIV is not a characteristic that you need to overcompensate for. HIV doesn’t have to lower your worth if you don’t let it. On the flip side, approaching your dating life without giving a flying f*ck whether he or she will accept your status is exactly the attitude you need find the right lovebird for you. Sure, there are some jerks who will take a pass on dating you because of HIV, but there are also people who won’t date black guys or Asian women, or who couldn’t get past someone being blind or hearing impaired. They are called assholes, and you wouldn't want to date such a small minded person anyway. The rest of the process is up to chance. You will likely meet some people that you like. Some people will like you. But it might not always happen at the same time, and that's just fine. Brush it off, move on, and don’t waste one second taking it personally. Pardon the cliché, but a good relationship is like an elaborate puzzle made up of two pieces. The grooves and ridges that make up your part should consist of your characteristics and interests, your strengths and your flaws, and that indescribable thing that you can never articulate but makes you so undeniably you. Sure, HIV might make up some miniscule part of who you are, but it won't overpower who will you fit with. No matter how fancy our phones get or how our communication changes, finding love still boils down to one simple, archaic thing — chemistry. You either have it with someone or you don’t. No matter how much the subject of love is studied, chemistry is still something that is unexplainable, indefinable, and impossible to get around. HIV is the opposite of chemistry. It is simply one of the many ways that we are beautifully imperfect. If you embrace who you are, HIV and all, then finding love will be just as excruciatingly wonderful as it would be without it. Now get out there and start seeing who fits your grooves.
Dear Dr. Gary, I had been dating this guy for a month or so, and we decided it was time to get intimate. So I disclosed my HIV status. He said it didn’t bother him, but he made this excuse about wanting to wait a little longer to really get to know each other. He hasn’t returned any of my texts since then. I don’t want to go through life alone, but sometimes I think maybe I will be. Signed, Lonely in Long Island The road can feel pretty lonely when you don’t have that one special person walking along beside you. Probably every week that a client a client tells me how much they want to be in love. How sad they feel about being alone and how hard it is to meet someone to have a life with. Let’s face it. Whether you’re in your 20s and maybe just starting to look for a life partner, or you’re further along in life, it’s not easy to find the right person. Living with HIV can add an extra wrinkle to the process of connecting with people who might have dating potential: Disclosing your diagnosis to someone who may or may not be very understanding. And if they are HIV-negative and not very well educated, that can leave you feeling like HIV is a pretty lonely road. The simple truth is that your HIV diagnosis affects the people in your life. It’s not something that you, or your partner, can pretend doesn’t need to be acknowledged and discussed, as you attempted to do with this guy you were dating. But as you learned (or maybe relearned) not everybody you meet is going to be willing to step up to the plate. As a result, it’s only human that you are feeling a little hesitant to take the risk of meeting new people. And if you’ve had a few disappointments along the way, you might also be wondering if having a partner is even in your future. In my experience, when you are living with HIV, getting connected with the right person is an inside job. By that, I mean it starts with working on your own attitude toward dating and having a relationship. And the important work you do on yourself is a whole lot more important than the dating tips you might be reading about, or your well-meaning friends may be passing on to you. To have a healthy relationship, I think it’s important to be comfortable with yourself, and confident in your ability to meet your own needs. Even to be able to face the future on your own and to not only be okay with that, but to feel like you have a quality life even if that means being single. After all, we all have to be able to make ourselves happy first. Nobody else can do that for us. Here are some ways to do that: Build a strong friendship network. We need people in our life who care about us, and whom we care about, to be with during the good times and the hard times. Friendships help you to maintain a solid foundation. And when your foundation is solid, you are in a better position to be open to a relationship because it will enhance your life rather than out of neediness or desperation to have someone to make you feel complete. After all, you’re already complete. Build yourself up. If you are caught up in reminding yourself how unlovable you are, then your dating life will be all about proving to yourself that you’re right. Stop labeling yourself. Especially with labels you don’t want – or need – to live up to. Sure, living with HIV presents some challenges. But you are the same person lovable and caring person you have always been. Always keep in mind: you are not your diagnosis. Take your eye off the ball. By focusing too hard on something, we can end up getting in our own way. And sending other people running for the hills. Instead of making finding a life partner your mission in life, make it your mission to have a quality life — quality in all areas of your life — right now and not sometime in the future (like when you have a partner). Just be your best you. Think of it this way: you is what you got. Your interests, your talents, your unique personality, your compassion for others. Let your light shine! When you’re happy with your life, and living it on your own terms, you are going to be that much more attractive to others. Who isn’t attracted to confidence? Make it fun. Finding a partner is a numbers game. You just have to keep putting yourself out there in the world. So make it about getting to know someone new, to share a smile and few friendly words, and make the day a little more enjoyable. If you’re able to accomplish that much, then that’s a lot. Take the pressure off yourself. And let go of the expectations for other people. Be happy with yourself. You’ll be that much more able to make someone else happy. Plus's mental health editor Gary McClain, Ph.D., is a counselor in New York City with a specialty in coping with HIV and other chronic health conditions. His books include The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Breaking Bad Habits and Empowering Your Life With Joy. I was living in New York City with a boyfriend I'll call Matt when I was diagnosed with HIV. I was 28 and he was just hitting 35. It was my first steady, long-term relationship, and we did what I used to think of as "grown-up" things. Like having Sunday football parties or fighting in Home Depot about what color to paint an accent wall in our living room. We made complex weekday dinners to distract ourselves from the fact that we were both pretty bored with each other. Of course, I wasn't really grown up, because I had never even been tested for HIV at my yearly checkup at Planned Parenthood, where I went for primary care. Taking care of your health is more adult than playing house with a boyfriend, yet, even though I had been tested for STIs, I had never thought of getting an HIV test. But one day, randomly, I added the HIV rapid test to the list of things to do before intake to my pap smear appointment. I thought it was a formality I should finally take care of. The positive result almost didn't compute at first. What does that mean? I kept asking the nurse who took me upstairs at the Margaret Sanger Center in the East Village for a second blood test to confirm the rapid test result. I was in shock that simply sleeping with probably close to a hundred men throughout my 20s — in college, in Rome, Italy where I lived for five years, in New York City upon my return — and not being strict about using condoms could have such a serious consequence. I grew up during the HIV/AIDS crisis and should have known better, but as a heterosexual woman, I equated safe sex with not getting pregnant more than with getting an STI, let alone HIV. I know how that sounds. It's embarrassing to admit that now, but I really did ignorantly think sex was all fun and games. For me, "dating," was basically a euphemism for casual sex. I had no type, no goal, really, and a bad one-night stand was just as much as fun as one that turned into a mini-romantic fling. I naively thought I was invincible, that one day a hookup would lead to true Disney princess-style love, and never assumed that HIV would have anything to do with my life. More From RedbookAfter my diagnosis, Matt and I stopped making dinner together, speaking to each other, and sleeping in the same bed. (He was negative, and had been getting tested his entire life.) We broke up within the year. There was a positive aspect to my HIV, though I didn't know that then. It woke me up and made me realize what I needed and wanted from a partner. Matt never been a good match for me, really; my diagnosis just shined a spotlight on that. The only bad thing about breaking up with Matt was the realization that I would have to start dating again. But when you're the kind of person who equates dating with dinners, drinks, and casual sex, HIV can put a real damper on all that. I naively thought I was invincible, that one day a hookup would lead to true Disney-princess-style love, and never assumed that HIV would have anything to do with my life. Dating after a breakup is already hard enough. Not only was I still trying to figure out what living with HIV meant, I couldn't just do that whole "put on your high heels and get back out there" thing that most newly single people do. Dating with HIV, seriously or casually, is hard — even though it doesn't have to be. I am HIV positive, but it is undetectable, which means I am one of the estimated 30 percent of the 1.2 million people living with HIV in the United States who cannot transmit the virus. Undetectable means is that the amount of HIV virus in my blood cannot be detected by a lab test. When a person goes on treatment — I take one pill a day — undetectable is the goal. Staying on treatment and keeping my viral load at undetectable levels means that I'm going to lead a long healthy life. Even better, it means that there's no risk of sexual transmission, even if I don't use a condom (though I'm better at that now, obviously). But many people are still unaware of this development in HIV treatment or are unwilling to accept the science because of the stigma that surrounds the virus. In the LGBTQ community, the absence of risk when it comes to sleeping with an undetectable partner, and using a condom to prevent other STIs, is much more widely accepted and normal, though still tough. But as a single heterosexual woman, I have the added challenge when dating of convincing men, who are often just as naive as I used to be, that they can be intimate with me. It feels like I have to twist someone's arm to see past my HIV viral load. You can sleep with me, I swear! is not the greatest pick-up line, and it's certainly not great for my self-esteem. That's why I initially avoided the entire conversation when I tried to get my groove back after Matt. For a while, I either didn't disclose my status at all or disclosed way too late for a number of reasons. Shame and fear was a part of it, but even more so I think there was a part of me that wanted to pretend that HIV hadn't happened to me. That I could go on bad Tinder dates and laugh about them at brunch with my friends, get set up with friends, and pick up a guy when I was out for the night, just like everyone else. Not disclosing my status at first led to a lot of heartache and unnecessary hurt for both me and my partners when I did eventually give them the "bad news." The 'bad news' was less about their risk of getting HIV and more about how I had deceived them, which is not an especially attractive quality in a mate. Not only did it lead to drama, but it was also dangerous at times. I got lucky for a little while and seriously dated a man for about a year, though I had initially lied to him for two months about my status. He forgave me and we worked through it, like grown-ups, and had a good time getting to know each other, but the insecurities that came along with the initial deceit led to more baggage than was healthy for either of us. We broke up, but still fall into bed together now and again, as one does with ex-boyfriends. It was messy, but my relationship with him taught me that being HIV positive doesn't have to be a barrier to intimacy, physical or emotional, and being scared to disclose hurt others more than myself. He made me feel "normal" again. Other men have not been as rational or kind. There have been way more trainwreck experiences than good ones since I've been out and open about my HIV status. The 'bad news' was less about their risk of getting HIV and more about how I had deceived them, which is not an especially attractive quality in a mate. This summer, I tried to disclose my status on dating apps around that moment when they suggest meeting up IRL. This feels necessary because in New York City, at least, dating apps tend to be used for hookups more than for finding a soulmate. After some polite, "oh, nevermind, then" responses or straight-up ghosting, I decided on my next date to wait until over drinks to disclose. He ordered another drink, thoughtfully, and then said, "Well, that's OK, you can still go down on me, right?" I paid the bill and left. The few — very, very few — who were not as terrible were equally worthless. After a few times together, they made it clear that dating a woman with HIV seriously is not something they really want to get into, which is almost worse than someone not taking you out at all. For the first time in my life, those hookups made me feel cheap and used and sad — rather than excited. Sometimes, I don't know if it's me or my HIV that keeps me dreadfully single. Sometimes, like many women, I picture myself growing old alone, loveless and sexless, feeding a cat while watching Real Housewives marathons. And I don't even like cats, so it's an even more depressing thought. Then again, I feel lucky that HIV has shown me what it means to date more carefully, like a "grown up," whatever that means. Maybe everyone eventually grows out of their hookup phase, I don't know, but my diagnosis hurried up that process. I used to think my active sex life meant that I was sex positive, but I wasn't. Sex positive means being careful, knowing what you want, and respecting your partner. Dating with HIV means actually dating, taking things slow, and getting to know someone — as well as knowing that a man actually wants to get to know me and not just hop into bed. It's not easy, but then again, dating never really is. Follow Redbook on Facebook. |