How did I get chlamydia if I didn't cheat? You can get chlamydia if your partner had vaginal, oral or anal sex with someone who was infected and then had sex with you.
It's quite another to learn you have an STI while you're in a monogamous relationship. If you have been totally faithful, you may assume that your partner acquired the infection while being unfaithful. Though it's possible they may have been intimate with someone else, it's also possible they never cheated at all.
Yes! Even if you're in a long-term, monogamous relationship, it's possible for you or your partner to have a previously undiagnosed and untreated STI.
It's important to know that chlamydia is not transmitted through casual contact (kissing or hugging, sharing food or drinks, or from toilet seats). The only way for chlamydia to be passed between people, apart from sexual contact, is from a pregnant person to their baby during childbirth.
Although chlamydia is highly contagious, it does not always transmit to a person's sexual partners. It is also possible to have a false-negative test result. Having more frequent sex with a partner who has chlamydia may increase a person's risk of contracting it.
If 2 people who don't have any STDs have sex, it's not possible for either of them to get one. A couple can't create an STD from nothing — they have to get spread from one person to another.
You can get chlamydia by having vaginal, anal, or oral sex with someone who has chlamydia. Also, you can still get chlamydia even if your sex partner does not ejaculate (cum). A pregnant person with chlamydia can give the infection to their baby during childbirth.
Can you develop a chlamydia infection on your own? Fortunately, you can't contract chlamydia on your own because it spreads through sexual contact with other people. Chlamydia bacteria does, however, thrive in vaginal fluid, semen, and pre-ejaculate (the fluids that the penis may release before sexual climax).
Most people who have chlamydia don't notice any symptoms.
If you do get symptoms, these usually appear between 1 and 3 weeks after having unprotected sex with an infected person. For some people they don't develop until many months later. Sometimes the symptoms can disappear after a few days.
Symptoms can occur within 2-14 days after infection. However, a person may have chlamydia for months, or even years, without knowing it.
Chlamydia Dormancy Facts
There is a greater chance of flare-up if your immune system has become weakened due to a cold or flu, cancer, HIV, or other severe illnesses. Although some symptoms can appear within weeks of contact, there have been reports of chlamydia remaining dormant for over twenty years.
Even if the infection was due to infidelity, whether or not to forgive is ultimately up to you and your partner's willingness to recommit to you. Generally speaking, an STI does not have to be a relationship dealbreaker.
Only Three STIs Are Transmitted Sexually Every Time
Some people assume that if lovers develop STIs, there must have been hanky-panky. That may be the case, of course, but it's also possible to contract several STIs without infidelity, and in some cases, without any sexual contact.
The most common way to get chlamydia is by having unprotected vaginal, anal or oral sex (sex without a condom). Other ways of getting chlamydia include: sharing sex toys that aren't washed or covered with a new condom each time they're used. infected semen or vaginal fluid getting into your eye.
In as little as one day, chlamydia may show up in your system, but testing should be done at least five days after exposure. It is recommended you retest two weeks after treatment to make sure you are free of the infection.
What is late-stage chlamydia? Late-stage chlamydia refers to an infection that has spread to other parts of the body. For example, it may have spread to the cervix (cervicitis), testicular tubes (epididymitis), eyes (conjunctivitis), or throat (pharyngitis), causing inflammation and pain.
Using a test with 97.2% sensitivity and 98.5% specificity,3 the positive and negative predictive values are 49.7% and 99.9%, respectively. That means the chance that a positive result is a false positive is greater than 50%.
This leads us to our question of the day –– can chlamydia be dormant and undetected? There are two parts to the answer. First, yes, chlamydia can lie unnoticed for long periods of time. However, even if chlamydia remains asymptomatic, tests can still detect its presence.
Myth: You can't catch chlamydia if you've only had sex once. Fact: If you have sex once with a partner who's got chlamydia, you've got around a 30% chance that you'll pick up the infection from that one time.
You are more likely to get infected with chlamydia if you don't consistently use a condom or if you have multiple partners.
When you're in a monogamous relationship, you expect that you'll both be only sleeping with each other and therefore won't be at risk for contracting any STDs. While that's often the case, sometimes it isn't—and new research finds that can have a serious impact on sexual health.
How can I know who gave me a sexually transmitted disease (STD)? Unless you and your sexual partner were both virgins to sexual activity and neither of you have EVER been outside of your relationship for sexual activity, you cannot know. Some STIs come from an exposure that happened years before.
Your Test Results
Once you are infected, you can infect someone else. Both gonorrhea and chlamydia often have no symptoms. Sometimes only one partner will have symptoms, even though both have the disease. That's why notifying your sexual partners about the results of your test is important.