4 Reasons Why You Should Tell Your Friends About You’re HIV Positive
Unconditional Support:
We
require a lot more support than you think. You can't do this sustainably in the
long term without your friends family whatever either we're dealing with the diagnosis
of being HIV positive, dealing with this stigma that comes around it because of
the society we live in, like this just a list of things that add extra stress
and uncomforted to our lives because we're HIV positive. We need to turn to
someone to talk about these things and be listened. When we're growing up, most
of our support comes from our family and then on the other side, when we're
finally settled down and have a partner, our primary source of support is
coming from that partner.
However,
it's this intermediate stage in high school, college young adult life where we
rely on our friends for support. It's mainly during this time where hiv is
super prevalent because we want to explore, meet new people, and date around,
which is the perfect opportunity to get rejected because of your hiv status or
be accepted. Still, you have to learn How to Deal With HIV.
So
as an example, there are two scenarios where your friends support during this
stage of your life are valuable. The first scenario is maybe you just got that
diagnosis that you're hiv positive. You need to take a medicine, and it's just
so overwhelming in this regard where a friend could come in someone that you
trust and could help you with this process, they will be able to do the
research with you and ensure you that there is someone there along for the ride
and that you're not alone in this world.
Spreading HIV Awareness:
You're
educating your friends in turn; you're breaking the stigma, which is fantastic.
Whatever you talk about, please discuss it with your friends. You are
influencing ideas onto them and educating each other about anything, so when
you tell your friend your HIV positive, they probably never personally knew
anyone living with HIV. You can tell them about how you only take one pill in
the morning, or you could tell them about u equals you, and when they know this
information, it trickles down. To break the stigma, we need to educate those
who are HIV negative to understand what it means for us to be living with HIV.
The more we do this, the more it trickles down this information, the more it'll
be more accessible for people like us to disclose their status and be
comfortable with being HIV positive.
Your Friend Will Give You Different Perspective:
You
can have all the unconditional support and love from your family members and
doctors. We so much appreciate that we're here for it. However, you have to
think, well, of course, they're going to be okay with me being HIV positive and
supporting me with it because they're so biased towards HIV. They know it's not
a big deal. They already are educated about it etc.; most of the time, your
friends probably had no prior exposure to what it means to be HIV positive. So
everything they know is what they learned in school, and that's a precise quote
unquote that the rest of society might think. So this can come in super handy
for multiple reasons. The first one again deals with disclosing
your HIV status every time. You disclose your HIV status, and
it's going to be a case-by-case scenario. I mean, if you found a partner
on HIV Positive Dating Site, and maybe you're just
hooking up with someone or maybe you just met someone at the bar that night or
maybe you've been dating this person10 times at least.
Now
you finally want to tell them or something like this every situation every
disclosure will be different, and you need to adapt to that person and how to
tell them. So this is where your friends come in the super clutch because they
can provide constructive insight into how they want to hear your hiv status
disclosure. If they were in the other person's shoes, your friends could only
help you with your problem if they understand the situation entirely.
Let's
just say maybe you told someone you're HIV positive after sleeping with them,
and you've been dating your HIV-negative partner, and then they found out. They
just completely lost the trust in you, and if you hadn't told your friends that
you're HIV positive, maybe you're trying to describe the situation to them, and
you're like. Yeah, well, I broke this guy's trust. I'm not sure what to do. You
can't tell them what you do to break their trust.
So
your friends are like, what the heck did you do to this guy? You can't say
anything, but if your friends knew, they could help better band-aid. the
situation and repair it than if they didn't know so I hope you can see that
your friends give you an excellent perspective of an hiv negative person's
mind.
Form Stronger and Closer Friendship:
You
form a stronger bond with your friend when you tell them you're hiv positive.
Like I said earlier, there is quote-unquote no reason to tell your friend
because you're not trying to sleep with them. The only reason you're telling
them is that it's out of you being so comfortable with them. You trust them so
much. with this information that you are willing to share this with them when
you present it like that when you tell them they're going to appreciate that
because that is so hard to tell someone and say it out loud, you and your
friend will have a different appreciation for each other.
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