Petting is a term that includes various sexual behaviors, including giving or receiving hickey, kissing, and sexual touch on the partner's body. Touching, massaging, caressing, and kissing someone can occur with an intermediary of clothing or behind clothes. Petting can be classified as heating (foreplay), and usually involves removing clothes and friction between the genitals.
Can petting cause pregnancy?
For pregnancy to occur, sperm must enter the vagina. This can be achieved with the touch of two genitals, or semen must "meet" with a woman's vulva. If you engage in sexual behavior with your partner while wearing clothes, there is no risk of pregnancy.
It is true that sperm are strong swimmers and can live outside the body, but they cannot swim through clothes. Sperm can only survive in fluids, especially semen and vaginal secretions. Outside the body, sperm is actually very fragile. After the semen is absorbed into the fabric of your clothes, they immediately die.
However, there is a very small chance for petting to cause pregnancy, when two people engaged in sexual activity are naked and the man ejaculates near the vaginal opening, allowing sperm to swim into the female reproductive tract with the help of vaginal mucus, meeting with egg cell, and then ends in pregnancy.
The risk becomes even greater if the same hand is also used to touch both genitals. When a man touches his own genitals and then uses the same hand to feel his female partner's genitals, he has the opportunity to move his body fluids (including sperm and pathogens) into his intimate partner's genitalia. Small amounts of sperm (even those found in pre-ejaculated semen) or semen are enough to transmit venereal disease or make your partner pregnant.
Another additional risk of petting that is rarely discussed is that this activity can pose a danger if it involves sucking the breast from a nursing mother, because she can contract venereal diseases from the virus that is absorbed into her breast milk.
Apart from the small chance of pregnancy from petting, all risks remain appropriate for you and your partner to consider. Petting, as one part of the warm-up to actual penetration, can develop more sexually over time, so that it carries risks and consequences which, although not common, can increase.
Is there a way to really avoid the risk of pregnancy from petting?
Sperm can live in the womb for 3-5 days when the woman is at her most fertile time, so know the ins and outs of your body's system and your fertile time and estimate when "safe days" for unprotected sex without causing pregnancy (usually 5 days before ovulation and 2-3 days after) is a very important step. To be safer, every time you have sex around fertile time, stay away from the penis from your vagina or use another method of contraception.
The best protection is knowing who your partner is, knowing their sexual history, both getting a venereal disease test before petting, not sharing sex toys (such as vibrators, dildos, etc.) without first washing them (or not sharing at all), and making sure that they don't there are traces of semen left in the fingers or hands when touching the vulva and / or vagina. Heavy petting with many different partners will significantly increase the risk of transmission of venereal disease.
If you and your partner aren't familiar with each other or you don't believe it, it would be better to limit intimate relationships with still wrapped clothes. Engaging in petting while "coupled" with a layer of fabric is a method foreplay safest you can do. However, condoms are still the best method to prevent transmission of venereal disease.
