Dr. Jasmine Abrams

You don't trust me?

You want to talk about my sexual history or know if I've been tested or see my results?

I'm telling you that I don't have anything.

You don't trust me?

And then the other way it was spoken about was if there's a partner that was cheating, you know, there's infidelity in the relationship, that's broken trust, right?

And that's going to encourage me to engage in safer sex behavior.

Interesting.

If I'm going to continue to have sex with this person, now I want to definitely use a condom.

Now I definitely want to make sure we've been tested if there's been infidelity.

There's so many cords that are getting struck when a partner is asking about your sexual history, your testing, asking you to wear a condom.

The trust cord is getting struck.

The do you think I'm dirty cord is being struck.

Do you think I'm gay cord is being struck?

Do you think I'm irresponsible?

I've already told you I don't have anything.

You don't believe me.

Wait, now are you cheating on me?

And even in our study, we saw that this was one of the reasons a lot of women had anxiety around these conversations because of how they thought their Black male partners might respond to them bringing it up.

But one of the things that has happened in the past few years that for me was like, oh my goodness, I wish it could be like this, COVID happened.

When COVID happened, people spoke very openly.