Telling your partner you are HIV-positive
TESTING positive for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can be devastating.
While you are trying to come to terms with the diagnosis, thinking of how you will move forward with your life, there is still another major hurdle that you will need to get over — telling your partner you are HIV-positive.
“There is no book on how to disclose to your partner that you are HIV-positive. There is no right or wrong way to do it,” said Dr Xavier Bromfield, who is a psychologist at Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL).
“You have to take into consideration the situation that you are in,” she noted. “You have to consider who you are disclosing to, where the best place is, when would be the best time, and also what you are going to say, and how you are going to say it.
“The relationship, and how you define it, is very important in deciding to disclose or not to disclose. You have to think about who it is going to affect. Is it going to affect the entire family? Is it going to extend beyond the family?
“When you are newly diagnosed, we try to meet with you as a team. We try to create a plan based on your relationship, whether you are in a marriage, a committed relationship or an open relationship,” the psychologist explained. She said: “Oftentimes we also encourage the person to seek assistance from a professional in the field to help them to disclose.”
While some individuals may be able to tell their sexual partner about their status on their own, there are others who choose not to do so, mainly because they fear the person’s reaction.
JASL Executive Director Kandasi Levermore said the fear of being hurt keeps many of their clients from breaking the news to their partners.
“The fear of violence is one of the main reasons expressed by persons, especially women, as to why they would choose not to disclose,” she said. “That is where we come in. We can facilitate that, and ensure that the partner is tested and counselled.”
The JASL offers a service called partner notification to its clients who do not wish to tell their sexual partners about their status.
“The client will tell us who the person is and how to find them, and give us their contact information. We would now need to exercise all the skills of trained health care providers to get that person tested, as long as the base person is not implicated,” Levermore explained.
She added that there is no legal requirement for an HIV-positive person to share their status with anyone — not even the individual or individuals with whom they are having sex — which underscores the need for everyone to get tested.
“You have to, as a person, exercise your personal responsibility of wanting to know what your status is regarding your health, generally. Testing makes us stronger,” Levermore charged.
— Candiece Knight
