Sex and the single FOF

Let’s say you’re divorced or widowed and are dating. You meet a man who you find extremely attractive. He’s smart, successful and divorced two years ago.

He wants to have sex and you can’t wait to rip off your clothes.

You spend a wonderful night together. He has reignited your sexual desires. Yippee!

Back up 8 hours.  Did he use a condom? “No, but what does it matter?” you ask, rhetorically. You can’t get pregnant, you say. True, but you can get H.I.V. or AIDS, even if you’re FOF.

“Only 25 percent of those over 50 who were single or had a new sex partner or more than one partner in a year said they had used a condom the last time they had sex,” according to a National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior by the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, reported an article in today’s New York Times Week in Review. “Almost 40 percent had never been tested for H.I.V., and a significant number didn’t know the sexual history of their partners,” the article continues.

Whatever the reason so many of us don’t worry about H.I.V. (e.g. it’s a young person’s disease, we think), it’s a dumb way to think and behave.

Perhaps the odds of getting AIDS are low, but why risk it at all? We’re smarter than that.

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