Jay Gardner is 22 years old and met boyfriend Louis through online dating. Here he talks about the impact of his severe haemophilia A on sex and his relationship.

Jay says: “As a young gay, I didn’t really think about how this sort of related to each other, just because I never really thought of it from a sexual aspect. I always just thought, well, my Haemophilia is my blood and my sexuality has nothing to do with my blood, so it didn’t really have a place next to each other, so I never thought of them as one before.

“It wasn’t until I had the discussion with my doctor about sexual health, to realise how much of an impact that it can have, especially through sex, with having a soleus bleed, having any issues with bruising in the anal region.  

“When it came to speaking to my doctor, it was kind of a tricky issue to talk about at first.  It wasn’t until I had seen a psychologist, who had asked, ‘Have you ever spoken about this?’  I said, ‘No.’ and she was like, ‘Oh, well, let’s open that gateway for a communication’ and she’s helped massively in different areas and aspects of my life and that helped me be more in tuned with my Haemophilia.

“I would say, as a person with Haemophilia, that the best thing you can do is know about your condition, because that’s the most empowering thing you can do. Having it; is to be clued in, how it works and how your body deals with it and how your medication benefits you most. And that really goes a long way.

“So my advice, for anyone who was curious and wanted to know more about their sexual health, would be to open that dialogue with their doctor, because they know the facts.  

“Trusted networks, such as The Haemophilia Society, the WFH and the EHC all have really good resources, which can be accessed online.”