[Analyzing the risk problem in couples with serodiscordance].

This article relates an investigation made with people who live in a situation of partner serodiscordance, shall say in partnerships in which one partner is HIV positive and the other is HIV negative. The study is aimed at understanding how these people deal with the constant risk this situation involves. Fifteen individuals living with serodiscordant partners were interviewed in the Testing and Counseling Center of the São Francisco de Assis School Hospital of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. The fear of transmitting the HIV to the seronegative partner is constant. Besides the fear, there are the difficulties to talk about the problem, to plan the future and to keep a satisfactory sexual life. Condom use does not seem to be an easily adopted practice. The interviewees point to other factors that need to be taken into consideration beyond safe sexual practices and knowledge of the forms of HIV transmission. Such factors seem to depend much more directly on the capacity of the partners to construct a new couple identity in face of a risk situation. The risk of infection always lies in another being. Paradoxically, in this case the risk of infection comes from someone so close that the continuation of the partnership itself depends on this other being.