First Time Secrets

Last night I watched a great show on MuchMusic (Canada’s version of MTV) called “Music Is My Life.” The show features young people who have been inspired by music to achieve a difficult goal or even just live through a bad situation — as they tell their stories, you listen to the music that played this role in their lives. Great show.

Last night’s episode featured a girl named Desiree. She’s 22 today, and when she was just 17, her doctor told her that she had HIV. She caught it from her boyfriend.

Desiree is an amazing girl. She continues to deal with the reality of living with HIV, and spends a lot of her time traveling and talking to other young people about HIV, AIDS, and the myths and misconceptions people have around sex and STIs (sexually transmitted infections).

I was impressed and humbled by Desiree’s commitment to helping others avoid the mistakes she’s made. She reminds people that yes, you can get an STI the first time you have sex, and that using a condom is still one of the most effective ways to protect yourself and your partner.

And most of all, I was impressed by her attitude to her own illness, and to life in general. She’s not preachy or angry or bitter — she’s friendly, positive, and takes a lot of pride in her role helping others.

Here’s Desiree’s story on living with HIV. (While it’s available on the show’s homepage, anyway! Also note that you may have trouble viewing this outside Canada — something to do with MuchMusic’s lawyers.)

Please remember that just because you’re young, or just because it’s your first time, you can still catch a life-threatening STI if you don’t play it safe. You deserve better. Learn the basics and know how to protect yourself.

Do you know what HPV is? Lots of people don’t, even though the human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted viral infection in the world today.

In fact, most people will get HPV at some point in their lives. It usually clears up by itself, though — and since most of the time it causes no signs or symptoms, most people never even know they had it!

Other times, though, HPV causes genital and anal warts (ugh!), and certain high-risk types of the HPV virus can even increase your risk of cancer. There are over 100 different types of the HPV virus, with over 30 of these being sexually transmitted. (The “good” news is that only 13 types are considered “high risk” types of HPV.) Don’t freak out if you do catch it — HPV is not a disease and most of the time it causes no harm.

So how do you catch HPV? Through skin-to-skin contact during a sexual encounter — even without any penetration. Which means that even virgins can catch it!

If you do catch it, there is no cure. You can’t take antibiotics for a virus (just like you can’t take antibiotics for a cold, which is also caused by a virus). But remember that most times it clears up on it’s own, just like a cold. If you do end up developing genital or anal warts there are many treatment options available to get rid of the warts. The warts usually aren’t painful; they are mostly just embarrassing.

So what should you do? Protect yourself so you don’t catch it.

And how can you do that? Let’s look at three things you can do:

1. Know the sexual history of your partner

The more people your partner has had sexual contact with, the higher the risk they could be infected with HPV or another sexually transmitted infection. If it’s the first time for both of you, of course, there’s no risk — as long as you’re both being honest about it being your first time.

2. Use a condom

Condoms significantly reduce your risk of catching HPV, but they aren’t 100% effective. Remember, HPV is transmitted through skin-to-skin contact, and you’ll be having plenty of that whether or not you actually go all the way. Still, you should be using condoms anyway to reduce your risk of other infections and unplanned pregnancy, so this is a good idea anyway.

3. Get vaccinated

The jury is still out on this option. As you may or may not have heard, there is a vaccine for women called Gardasil which is available to prevent the four most common strains of HPV associated with genital warts and cancers.

Because it’s new, the vaccine is still being tested. Like any medication, it can have side effects — and until it’s been around for a while, we won’t know whether the risks from those side effects are worth the benefits. Still, it’s worth looking into, if only so you can get educated and make up your own mind about whether it’s right for you.

The vaccine, called Gardasil, is given as three injections over six months and is kind of pricey — currently $360 for all three doses. It works best when given before you have any contact with HPV… so the best time to get vaccinated is while you are still a virgin and haven’t been engaging in skin to skin genital contact with anyone.

Even if you do choose to get the vaccine, remember that you should still get regular Pap tests. These tests are the only way to detect abnormal cells in your cervix that could potentially develop into cervical cancer. It’s all part of being a woman, and it’s really not as scary as it sounds! It takes about ten minutes and doesn’t hurt at all… and speaking from experience, it’s actually much less painful than a visit to the dentist can be.

There are a lot of people out there who have never even heard about HPV, even though it is estimated that at least 75% of Canadians will have at least one type of HPV infection in their lifetime and there are approximately 6 million new cases of HPV every year in the United States.

Now that you know what it is, consider the HPV vaccine for yourself (or your daughter), use condoms to reduce your risk, get regular Pap tests and educate others about it. The Canadian website HPVInfo has more good information on the subject.

Hi! I’m Samantha, and this is my new site!

I’m really excited about launching this. It’s taken a LOT of time to put together, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens next.

I got the idea for First Time Secrets when someone close to me told me she was planning to lose her virginity. She needed some advice, and I told her pretty much what I knew about the topic. And then we started looking around online — and I was amazed that there are so few sites with good information specifically about this topic!

Anyway, it seemed to make sense to put it all in one place — so that’s what I’m doing now. I’m hoping that this site will be a great resource for anyone who is thinking about having sex for the first time, and looking for real, useful information about how to do it.

While I was getting this information together for my friend, I heard an incredible number of really sad stories about people’s first times. Some were friends, some were new acquaintances. I seem to have a talent for getting people to open up.

Anyway, many of them had never even told their stories to ANYONE — I was the first one to hear them. And it made me feel really sad, and angry, and wish that they could have known even a fraction of what I’ve learned.

That’s what inspired me to write the “Guide to Losing Your Virginity.” It’s an instruction manual for your first time! Cheesy, I know, but it’s also got all the information anyone needs to make good decisions their first time, know if they’re ready for sex or not, treat their partner well, and just have some good sex right from day one without worrying about pain, pregnancy, diseases, or even just crappy sexual technique that turns their partner off.

Basically, it’s a set of instructions for having good sex, right from the start. You can click here to learn more on the First Time Secrets homepage.

I’ll be adding to this blog as things progress, and I’ll try to make this site helpful and fun and a place that people like to drop by and visit. I’d love to hear from y’all! Drop me a comment on this blog or an email here:

samantha *at* firsttimesecrets *dot* com

To great first times,

Samantha