Students Unaware That Telling Lovers About Past Partners Is a Safe-Sex Practice
More than one third of sexually active college students in a recent survey avoided telling their partners about previous sexual partners, according to a study by a researcher at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.
"And nearly a quarter of the sexually active students had intentionally lied to their lovers about their number of sexual partners," says Anne E. Lucchetti, assistant professor of speech communication at TCU.
The results of the survey of 364 undergraduates indicate that many college students may not know that disclosing their sexual history is a safe-sex practice, says Lucchetti.
Public health experts say that each additional sexual partner puts an individual at increased risk of exposure to a sexually transmitted disease and increases the distribution of such pathogens.
"The good news is that most students who do know that telling their partners is a safe-sex practice appear to be willing to tell them. These results suggest that future safe-sex campaigns on college campuses need to continue to dispense educational information."
Lucchetti's findings are detailed in an article titled "Deception in Disclosing One's Sexual History: Safe Sex Avoidance or Ignorance?" It was published in Volume 47 of Communication Quarterly, a professional journal, which came out in the summer of 2000.
She found that while virtually all students felt knowledgeable about safe sex activities, more than 40 percent did not know that disclosing one's sexual history was a safe-sex practice.
People between the ages of 15 and 29 contract 86 percent of all sexually transmitted diseases, according to the U.S. Public Health Service. Because of this, Lucchetti recommends that safe sex campaigns should go beyond offering educational information and give students techniques on how to disclose their sexual history without causing hurt to themselves, their partner, or to the developing relationship.
"Presently, we do not have good models for talking about one's sexual history with a potential lover," she notes. Previous research has shown that most sexually active college students are comfortable discussing condom use but not their own past actions and behaviors.
Dishonesty in sexual relationships is not only risky in increasing the potential for contracting a disease, Lucchetti observes. It also places the relationship at risk emotionally. Once the lie is discovered the partner who has been lied to will have less trust of his of her partner.
"With a college student population, (we) must change perceptions of talking about sexual histories by demonstrating that such conversations can increase rather than decrease trust and intimacy," notes Lucchetti.
-30-
Contact Anne Lucchetti at 817-257-6665 or by e-mail at [email protected]. If you would like a copy of her paper, please contact Dick Jones Communications at 814-867-1963.
RSS