I’m H.I.V.-Positive but Undetectable. Do Casual Sex Partners Need to Know?

This is the fourth installment in a series for this column, answering readers’ thorniest questions about sex and love as part of a special magazine issue on relationships.

I’m a young gay man who is H.I.V.-positive. I learned of my status more than a year ago and started taking medicine the day I was diagnosed. Since then, I have been continuously undetectable, meaning I cannot transmit the virus to others through sexual activity. But even though I pose no risk to my partners, my status still weighs heavily on my mind.

I’m certain that if I were to start dating someone seriously, I would disclose it before getting down to business. With random casual hookups, it has been my practice to tell people — though I would rather not. It feels private, it often kills the mood and, most of all, since I’m undetectable, it feels unnecessary. After all, if I can’t transmit the virus, it feels about as relevant to casual sex as my cholesterol levels.

To be sure, H.I.V. is a scary virus, so it makes perfect sense that people would want to know if their partner is positive — and a right to know clearly arises in some cases. I don’t think it’s controversial to say that a person with untreated H.I.V. is ethically obligated to disclose their status to their prospective sexual partners. But if I’m incapable of infecting others (since I take my medicine every day) does the obligation remain? — Name Withheld

From the Ethicist:

When it comes to the H.I.V. status of people who have multiple sex partners, some know that they’re positive, some believe that they’re negative based on past tests and some don’t know one way or another. As a person who is undetectable and regularly monitored, you present a lower transmission risk than people in the second two categories — who won’t feel that they have anything to disclose.