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Last night my friend called me with a “hypothetical question.”
Would you still be friends with someone who had an incurable STD if they were knowingly having raw sex with others? Or would you consider that not your business?
Initially, I didn’t read the text properly. So, I missed the whole part about the person knowingly spreading their disease. I thought she was just asking if I could be friends with someone who had an STD. In which case, I so wouldn’t care. Truth is we meet people with STDs, curable and incurable, everyday. But that’s not what she was asking. She was asking if I found it morally repugnant to have a friend who was intentionally spreading an incurable disease. Well, yeah it was definitely a helluva problem. Not only was it ethically wrong it’s also illegal.
She said that this hypothetical person didn’t want to tell her partners that she had it because she didn’t want to feel rejected and didn’t want to use protection because intercourse feels “more intimate” without it.
Well yeah that’s truly representative of a psychological issue. Maybe something like a sociopath, no regard for the pain and suffering you may be causing others in the long run. And as a friend I would definitely say something. Though, I don’t know if this person, “my friend,” would receive it when she’s using bogus excuses like “it just feels better” for having diseased, unprotected sex. It’s a sad case.
I would remind my friend that this type of behavior is not only dangerous to the people she’s knowingly infecting. It’s dangerous to her as well. I’d remind her of the man who killed a woman with HIV shortly after they’d slept together and she revealed her status. Though he never should have killed her, I, and several of MadameNoire’s readers, understood why he would be motivated to commit such a heinous crime. She was literally playing with his life.
As a friend it would be your duty to at least attempt to save her from a similiar fate. And if she refused to listen this, she wouldn’t be a friend I could associate with anymore. I couldn’t rationalize being friends with someone with such disregard for human life. Especially the lives of men she cares enough about to sleep with. If she would do that to someone she was willing to sleep with, God only knows what type of deplorable treatment she would show me as just a friend. It really isn’t that much of a stretch. People rarely reserve mistreatment for certain people in their circle. It’s more of an ubiquitous type of behavior.
And if my friend decided not to listen to me and continued sleeping with others, raw and diseased, legally I could go to the authorities and tell them what she is and isn’t saying before she beds these men. But maybe that would be taking it a bit too far.
What do you think about this situation? Could you remain friends with someone who was living so foul, endangering others? How would address the situation with your friend and what would you do if he or she decided not to change their ways?
