There’s a lot that can complicate dating. The rise of dating app fatigue (one in five dating app users say they’ve had a bad experience), dealing with unrequited love, selfish dating culture – to name a few. Now throw having a sexually transmitted infection (STI) into the mix. It really shouldn’t, since one million of us contract an STI every single day and most are curable, but having an STI can complicate dating even further.
Only 28 percent of people with an STI would feel comfortable disclosing their status to a partner. But communicating STI status should be a key part of sex. It’s important, not just for your health but for theirs too, and for helping reduce the very real stigma attached to STIs. One sex-positive dating app, WAX, is on a mission to make STI status sharing a natural part of dating by encouraging those conversations with an integrated test result sharing feature.
To create the tool, WAX are partnering with Sexual Health London so their users can upload their results into the app directly, rather than writing them in their bios. There’s clearly demand for this sort of feature. WAX co-founder says users are often unsure whether they can trust someone’s claim to be STI-free, not least because there have been cases of people “forging or photoshopping results to give a false negative.” The integration with SHL solves that by offering verified test results, shared securely and directly between users. No screenshots. No guesswork.
From a tech standpoint, users are in control. With consent, their testing data is validated via SHL and made available to share privately with matches, not broadcast on public profiles. “User choice, user data and user privacy is paramount for us to hand to the user themselves,” says Sayle. Access can be revoked at any time.
Still, the feature lands in a digital landscape where sexual health stigma is alive and well — and putting that information out there, even with privacy controls, isn’t as simple as flipping a switch.
Add into the mix the horror show that is dating apps right now, are these apps the right place to have those all-important conversations? Mashable speaks to sex educators and people who’ve navigated dating with an STI to find out.
Dating with a positive STI status
Misconceptions around STIs make dating with one challenging, whether you’re dating for love, casual fun, or something in between. Though many STIs such as chlamydia, gonorrhoea and syphilis are both curable and relatively common, people still hold archetypal ideas about STIs based on moralist views – ideas that having an STI makes people untrustworthy, careless or even dirty.
Where does this leave daters with STIs? Well, a Superdrug survey of 2,000 sexually active adults in the UK revealed that 91 percent believed an STI diagnosis would negatively impact their relationships, social life, love life and general confidence.
Laura Clarke, sex educator at My Body and Yours and author of Step Bi Step, believes the idea of STI integration on dating apps has potential but warns that we need to tread carefully. “In the best case scenario, sharing STI status results in a more normalised view of sexually transmitted infections and can help people to make informed choices about the sex they're having,” she tells Mashable. “It could lead to a rise in barrier methods and reduce the spread of infections.”
But she’s quick to point out that we’re not yet in that best case scenario. “While I wholeheartedly believe in a society where we banish STI stigma and have open and honest conversations, in reality, we're just not there yet. And while this update may push us further in the right direction, it could also be a safety risk to dating app users.”
“If this information is revealed after a match, there is a genuine risk that somebody might unmatch or ghost the individual who has shared this information,” warns Clarke.
Sex educator Leanne Yau from Polyphilia tells Mashable that this calls for a broader cultural shift. “People need to get tested every six months, even those who are in long-term monogamous relationships,” she says, pointing out that tools like WAX’s are great, but the matter of normalising STI status sharing needs more.
Some STIs have more stigma attached than others
Dating with an STI isn’t easy. Luca, a 26-year-old customer support agent, has had four common, curable STIs: chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis, and crabs. He once had the first three at the same time while casually dating. “Telling past matches wasn’t too hard, just a bit awkward,” he says. “Most people were okay, but one accused me of giving it to him. That part wasn’t nice at all. It really made me feel dirty.”
Luca thinks WAX’s feature is a great idea, but believes some communities handle STI conversations better than others. "I get the sense that us gay men are more cautious with STIs and [it's part of gay hookup culture] to get regular checkups and it’s something quite normal to talk about." He's not sure that straight communities have the same built-in communication line.
Luca believes how easy it is to share STI status on dating apps largely depends on the infection. On Grindr, he lists his negative HIV status and would disclose curable STIs. But, he admits, “I don’t know how I would feel about sharing it on dating apps if I was HIV positive.”
“People can be mean and cruel on the internet, even on dating apps,” he says, having seen harsh messages about those with HIV. While he would disclose a positive status to trusted partners before sex, “I definitely wouldn’t post it on my profile.” He also recognises his own privilege. “I think it’s easier for me to talk about STIs as a white male than it would be for a woman.”
Chloe*, a 32-year-old football coach is HIV positive and using a pseudonym as not everyone in her life knows about it. “I saw that WAX were adding this feature and it gave me so much hope that society is moving towards a more accepting culture around STIs, but I'm not sure I'd use it" she tells Mashable.
"Part of having HIV unfortunately means educating every new person I start any kind of relationship with."
Now in a committed relationship with a woman she met on Bumble, Chloe says she waited until they met in person to disclose her status. “Part of having HIV unfortunately means educating every new person I start any kind of relationship with.. People are often open to dating me but only because I have the chance to tell them that HIV isn’t as scary as it used to be and there are pills we can both take to stop it from passing,” she explains, referring to PEP and PrEP, the former being a medication to be taken after unprotected sex to prevent HIV transmission, and the latter being the preventative version.
“I didn’t want to subject myself to abuse or have people unmatch.” Like Luca, she feels a disclosure tool may be better suited to casual encounters. “If I was meeting someone on an app and wanted to have sex within the hour, I’d obviously tell them. And I think this tool would work nicely for curable STIs too. But there's still so much stigma around HIV so I don't think it fits every situation.”
More work is needed to destigmatise STIs
Sayle acknowledges stigma still exists and that WAX is a dating app set up for sex-positive people, so already set up for "reasonability and accountability". She hopes, however, that this move will set the standard and STI status uploads will soon become the norm for dating apps.
However, education alone is not enough. “More needs to be done to destigmatise STIs and share more about just how common they are.”
For some, sharing STI info on dating apps leads to open, positive conversations. Jamie, a 29-year-old producer, says that after testing positive for Hepatitis B, dating felt like a trap. “I never knew when to bring it up. Too soon and they’d freak out. Too late and it felt like I’d lied.”
“I never knew when to bring it up. Too soon and they’d freak out. Too late and it felt like I’d lied.”
But dating apps helped. “Being upfront filters out people who wouldn’t be empathetic anyway. I’d rather be rejected for being honest than ghosted later.”
Yau stresses disclosure is not just about the sharer. “People on the receiving end [of STI disclosure] also need to figure out how to make themselves a safe space for that disclosure and that honesty to happen. Offering this tool in tandem with more education around STIs in general would be beneficial,” she explains
Clarke adds that while honesty is important, context matters. “There’s a difference between doing this on a third date, when you're present and ready to debunk myths, versus via an app, where a partner can unmatch based on incorrect assumptions and you're unable to respond.”
There are also privacy concerns. “This is your private medical information. Uploading it on the internet is bound to cause anxiety, especially around data breaches,” says Clarke. “What if you're okay with your sexual partners knowing your status but not your boss? Your mum? Your kids?”
She warns that STI data could be misused. “Could this also lead to matching with people just to screenshot their status and share it as some kind of medical revenge porn?”
It’s not far-fetched, given dating apps are already misused for harassment and Feeld’s alleged data breach earlier this year caused widespread concern.
For now, integrating sexual health data into dating apps is a cultural litmus test. Can we treat STI status as just another aspect of health, or do we still flinch at those three letters on a profile?
As Yau points out, common, curable STIs should be seen like a cold: inconvenient but not shameful. We would not judge someone for pausing sex because of a stomach bug, so perhaps one day we will feel the same about STIs. At the very least, WAX’s feature prompts us to consider where sexual transparency ends and digital exposure begins. Conversations still falter due to deeper structural stigma, but tools like this may help shift STI status from deal-breaker to no big deal.
