Relationship with an agreement

Many people in a committed relationship reach an agreement – those can be very different. If both partners are living without HIV, such agreements may make it possible to dispense with condoms, femidoms, or PrEP. The important thing is that there is mutual, complete trust.

Do you both live without HIV? Do you have other STIs? 

If you want to agree to have sex without a condom, femidom or PrEP and want to be sure within the framework of complete trust, proceed as follows:

• You protect yourself with a condom, femidom or PrEP until an HIV test is reliable (at least six weeks for a laboratory test or twelve weeks for an HIV self-test) or abstain from sex, after which you test yourself. Only then does an agreement make sense.
• At this point, you also test  for the most common other STIs together to ensure that you are treated for these at the same time if necessary.

HIV infections do occur within relationships. An agreement not only requires mutual trust. Both partners also have to be clear about how to protect themselves. Infection often occurs unknowingly, and it is often passed on to the partner unknowingly as well.

Is one of you living with HIV? 

For couples in which one or both persons are living with HIV, additional HIV protection can be dispensed with if the viral load is undetectable as a result of effective HIV treatment (undetectable: protection through treatment). However, this does not protect against other STIs such as syphilis. Behaviour-based regular testing for the most common STIs also makes sense in a relationship. Our test recommendations.

What types of agreement are there? 

Agreements only work if you can talk openly with each other. Expectations often differ. Whether you have a monogamous or open relationship: as long as you protect yourself during sex outside the relationship with condoms, vaginal condoms or PrEP or are in effective HIV treatment, there is very little risk that you will infect each other with HIV.