your sex life -- and still enjoy it.  Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders. Comments I am so sorry about what has happened to you. It is such an awful thing to have someone lie to you, but this takes it to a whole other level. I really think that the best thing you can do is get some counselling - there are some fantastic counsellors out there who will be able to help you work through this and allow you to start building trust with people again. There are no short answers but I think doing that will allow you to start working your way out of the darkness you are in right now. My heart goes out to you. It will take time to accept that someone deceived you in this way, and whatever his reasons for doing so, he did deceive you. You feel deceived because you have been deceived. Deception in any relationship is going to make you call into question all the foundations on which it was built and sustained. You will be able to overcome this, but before you start drawing up the lists that are (quite rightly) recommended by Pamela, I think you need time to process the scale of this betrayal of trust. Pamela gives broadly good advice and the enquirer has been seriously betrayed at one level, although it seems clear that his HIV-positive partner did not put him at any