Adolescents appear to have very little idea of whether their sexual partners have another sexual relationships simultaneously or not. A possible misunderstanding may leave them at a higher risk for contracting a sexually transmitted disease.
According to Chavonne Lenoir, adolescent boys tend to overestimate their female partners’ concurrent relationships, while girls tended to believe their male partners were more monogamous than they really were.
“Concurrency is problematic because it’s associated with an increase in the risk of STD infection as you increase the number of people with whom you interact sexually,” said Ms. Lenoir of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. “It’s important to look at interpartner agreement on sexual concurrency, as perceptions of this really influence one’s own perception of risk.”
Ms. Lenoir evaluated data from the Perceived Risk of Sexually Transmitted Disease study, a 5-year longitudinal study conducted in Baltimore. The data were gathered in face-to-face interviews with 90 adolescent heterosexual couples. 98% of the participants were black. Men were a bit older than women (19 years vs. 17 years) and had initiated sexual activity at an earlier age than women (13.2 years vs. 14 years). Women appeared to be more likely to be in school at the time of the interview (62% vs. 33% of the males).
Participants were asked if their sexual partner had simultaneously another sexual relationships, and then to self-report their own concurrent sexual relationships. They also answered questions about the length of their relationship, whether or not they lived together, and emotional engagement in the relationship.
According to Ms. Lenoir, men overestimated their partners’ concurrency. Only 20% of women agreed with their partners that they had concurrent sexual relationships. 80% said they did not. Men were a little better at predicting if their partners had no other sexual relationships: 84% of their partners agreed that they had no concurrent sexual partners, and 16% disagreed.
Women were no better at predicting their partners’ concurrency. Girls tended to underestimate that. Only 37% of the men agreed with their partner that they had no other sexual relationships; 63% said they did have other relationships. The numbers were reversed when women said their partner had simultaneous relationships: 61.5% of the men patterns agreed that they did, and 38.5% said they did not.
