parejas afectivas

22:20 Nov 16, 2016 

You make good arguments, though a researcher should be careful not to invent terms without defining them clearly. What bothers me the most is that this relationship is characterized as a distinct from "parejas sexuales" - which is about as unscientific as you can get.

21:19 Nov 16, 2016 

After all, at one end of the scale it is perfectly normal these days, albeit not universal, of course, for condoms to be used in casual sexual encounters. But many people, I think, feel some aversion to using them with a significant other, a person to whom they feel an emotional attachment, even if this is not what you would call a "steady" relationship. (I'm referring to using them to prevent STDs, not to prevent pregnancy.) And I don't think the decision whether or not to use a contraceptive will necessarily be based wholly on a calculation of the chances of being infected, that is, on the probability that one's partner is infected. Using a condom might, perhaps, be interpreted by the other party as indicating that one sees that other person as a risk, which could incline someone not to do so.

So as I say, I think emotional issues are far from irrelevant to this issue and should certainly not be dismissed as "lovey-dovey" or lacking in academic seriousness. And pace UNAIDS, I find the term "intimate partner" just a touch aseptic and ultimately rather evasive (as I said before, any sex is intimate).

21:14 Nov 16, 2016 

Well, the fact that the UNAIDS document uses the term "intimate" certainly means it deserves consideration. But I have some reservations here.

First, I have checked the equivalent Spanish document, "Orientaciones terminológicas de ONUSIDA", and neither "pareja afectiva" nor "pareja íntima" appears in it. There doesn't seem to be an official Spanish AIDS term for this, though "pareja íntima" is used in UN Spanish documents, at least in relation to intimate partner violence. On the other hand, the term the author has used, "pareja afectiva", is very widespread in Spanish-language research on sexual behaviour and contraception.

Personally I have misgivings about dismissing the emotional element inherent in "afectiva" as irrelevant. It seems to me that love and affection are part of life and cannot properly be ignored by sex researchers, or by sociologists or psychologists generally. The author may be using the term as a conventional way of referring to a stable relationship, or may possibly be suggesting that people's feelings towards their sexual partner affect their sexual behaviour and specifically their use of contraception. This seems to me very likely to be true.

20:35 Nov 16, 2016 

Then perhaps 'intimate' might be a compromise? This is supposed to be a research paper, but apparently the author hasn't taken the trouble to research the basic standardized AIDS terminology. The categories, as written in the original, are not mutually exclusive, since a steady-or-whatever relationship is still sexual--or we wouldn't be talking about it.

13:40 Nov 16, 2016 

It does seem to me that this question raises a common and basic problem in translation generally: do we translate what the writer says, or do we put what we think the writer probably meant to say or what makes most sense to us in the context? We all, I think, tend to do the latter a lot. In principle, it's always seemed to me that pinning down the inherent semantic scope of the source term is the first task, and one that is often glossed over. In this case, I've already suggested that equating "afectiva" with "steady" or "long-term" may be reading meaning into the term that it doesn't inherently carry, apparently on the basis of an assumption about people's decisions on using contraception. If the long-lastingness or steadiness of the relationship is the uppermost consideration in the writer's mind, rather than its "affective", "romantic" or "intimate" nature, it's reasonable, I think, to ask oneself why the word "afectiva" was used rather than something like "estable".

12:22 Nov 16, 2016 

I think a person can have an intimate relationship that is not steady/regular, and that is why I suggested "steady", which designates a long-term relationship, involving "afectos"...

https://www.google.pt/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&es...

11:32 Nov 16, 2016 

My answer cites the standardized terminology for AIDS. See the link below.

15:12 Nov 15, 2016 

At least if you have sex with an inanimate object you don't have to worry about wearing a condom.

15:06 Nov 15, 2016 

15:05 Nov 15, 2016 

An "affective relationship" in sociology/psychology need not only refer to a sexual bond; you can have an "affective relationshp" with inanimate objetcts (for example, fetishism). IMHO all the lovey-dovey suggestions so far (while not "wrong" per se) are less appropriate for a formal academic text of this nature.

14:47 Nov 15, 2016 

:) Yes, it's sometimes used in effect as a euphemism for any sexual partner. I'm still not sure that it refers here only to steady partners; I have a feeling that may be restricting it too much. My feeling is that it means having sex with the person you're currently committed to and whom you know and care for, as opposed to people you've only just met (gay male sex commonly includes a great deal of the latter). But as you say, it depends what you mean by "romantic" and "steady".

14:16 Nov 15, 2016 

Yes, the text you have found there clearly has "pareja afectiva" as a sexual relationship of whatever type. In my text it seems to be used as a term to distinguish the type of relationship as different from the more casual relationships; all the relationships mentioned in the text are de facto sexual ones, so here it is referring to one of a more stable nature. So in your text it is being used for what I understand as a "romantic partner", while in my text it is being used for what you understand as a "romantic partner".
Don't you just love language?

14:03 Nov 15, 2016 

I'm not sure we can assume that "pareja afectiva", as used here, necessarily means "pareja estable", though they are sometimes used synonymously. This is from a relevant study on condom use with heterosexual "parejas afectivas":

"Aunque ya existen algunos instrumentos semejantes, ninguno plantea de forma exclusiva la valoración de las ventajas e inconvenientes del uso del preservativo con una pareja afectiva; puesto que o bien no concretan el tipo de pareja (Brown, 1984; Bernard, Hebert, Man y Farrar, 1989; Noar, Morokoff y Redding, 2001), o bien se refieren a la pareja principal (Grimley et al., 1997; Lauby et al., 1998) o bien a la pareja estable ( Morrison-Beedy, Carey y Levis, 2002)."
http://revistas.um.es/analesps/article/download/140632/12672...

13:56 Nov 15, 2016 

My feeling is that "romantic partner" is not someone you've only just started a passionate liaison with; it's someone you've already got to know enough to trust them. It may not imply a long-lasting relationship but it does imply a considered and non-casual partnership, involving some emotional intimacy and sharing of personal issues that brings with it a concern for the other person's welfare and (normally) an expectation of fidelity that goes with commitment. That, to me, is the crux of the relevance to using precautions.

13:40 Nov 15, 2016 

Many thanks to all three for your answers so far - as always I really do appreciate your help. My thoughts at the moment are as follows:
- "romantic partners" - I don't have a problem with the register at all, and agree that it is a recognised term. However, I am not sure that it has exactly the right meaning here; my understanding of "romantic partners" - and of the much more formal "partners in an affective relationship" - is simply that we are talking about people who are romantically involved - which could be a short, passionate liaison or a long-term, steady relationship. It is my understanding of the text that it is more the latter that we are going for here - so the opposite of a casual partner, if you will. My understanding is that one of the at-risk groups is people who don't take necessary precautions because they are in a steady relationship and so don't take into consideration that partner's past.
- "domestic partnership" goes too far the other way and suggests a formalised relationship.
Maybe I should go with "steady partner"? Any other thoughts?