Loading ...- Category:
- Community, Soap Box
- Author:
- Victorian AIDS Council
- Posted:
- Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Trade, one-night stand, friends with benefits, fuck buddies, casual roots-¦ we have plenty of expressions that describe the terms of a casual sexual relationship, but when emotional involvement comes into the picture, we seem to be lost for words.
Terms like -˜boyfriend’ or -˜partner’ can seem, respectively, a little adolescent or clinical. The more preoccupied we become with achieving equal legal recognition of same-sex relationships, the easier it is for us to overlook the fact that being able to call your partner -˜husband’ won’t in itself define the nuts and bolts of your relationship.
Whether you call it a marriage, a civil partnership or something else, it’s still down to you and your other half to decide how it’s going to work.
For example, is the relationship going to be monogamous, or is it OK if you and your partner play around? If you are going to have an open relationship, do you tell each other about your other dalliances or would you both prefer not to know? And if you are going to be playing with others, is there anything you wouldn’t want your partner to do with anyone else but you -” and vice versa?
The Victorian AIDS Council’s/Gay Men’s Health Centre’s Peer Education program’s popular relationships workshops help men develop the skills to ask themselves -” and their partners, if they have them -” important questions like these.
Relationships workshops have been an important part of the VAC/GMHC’s health promotion and HIV prevention work since the early 1990s, not only because a good relationship is good for our general wellbeing but also because a lack of communication and clarity in relationships has been recognised as a risk factor for HIV transmission.
For example, that secure, warm and fuzzy feeling of being in a new relationship can lull men into assuming, rather than knowing for sure, that they don’t need to use condoms. Men often also find it easier to assume their partner wants the same sort of relationship they do than have a potentially unromantic conversation about whether or not the relationship will be monogamous or open.
Over the years the relationships workshops have helped hundreds of men in relationships -” and men who’d like to be -” come to grips with what they want and expect from relationships and to learn communication and negotiation skills.
The workshops are free, enriching and entertaining and run one evening a week over six weeks. For more information call Asvin at the VAC/GMHC on 9865 6700.
