Over dinner talk

Last night us ladies went out and did what ladies do best, eat loads of curry (it’s amazing how we can scoff when there’s no men around and we don’t have to pretend to be demure- Gavin has seen this dark side on more than one occasion I suspect).

During our curry munch-athon we caught up at great gusto, trying to cover off as many topics as possible in between bites of chicken and mouthfuls of rice. The most striking conversation for me was a dilemma one of our mates is going through at the moment, namely, she has picked up an STI from someone and really doesn’t know who. As Lindsey pointed out, ‘it could be anyone’ which prompted me to spit out a piece of my poppadum (it wasn’t meant THAT way) but she had a point. The thing with the STI in question is that you really wouldn’t know you had it, until you were tested. Just so happened one of her ex’s notified her that he had this affliction and accused her of being the infector. Outrageous. The thing is, he had the symptoms so was likely to have had it for longer, hence, HE was the infector (this may well be tenuous, but us girls stick together you know).

Anyway, what got me pondering was if I was in this position, how would I feel about the prospect of phoning around my ex’s and telling them about this rather delicate situation. How on earth is it best coped with?

The ‘You f**king f**ker approach’

‘I thought you ought to know you are diseased and have in turn poisoned me with your germs, you are the scum of the earth”

The ‘hands-up- approach

‘It turns out I seem to have Chlamydia and therefore, I’m afraid there’s a fairly strong chance that you have as well. Sorry old chap.

The ‘sitting on the fence approach’

‘I’m just phoning to tell you that I have this STI, I’m not sure how I got it, or who gave it to who, but it seems reasonable enough to suspect that you might have it also, so you’d better get checked just in case.’

The gutless approach (best administered by a text- even better if the text is sent anon)

‘I Think you’ve got Chlamydia, why? Because I have. Get checked.’

My favourite is the top one, but I know, faced with this situation (because this REALLY is a friend, and not me, honest….I’d tell you) I’d take the easy, softy, namby pamby route and hope that it wasn’t me. I guess the moral of the story here is, you never know what people have been up to and with whom, so the best bet, whatever kind of relationship or otherwise, is get checked regularly…you’re probably saving yourself a whole load of admin in the long run. I know we hate to think it, but people do cheat on each other….and men, are. Well. Men.