The impact of AIDS on male-female relationships

This article presents background information on AIDS, a growing health care and social problem in the United States and internationally. After reviewing the current data on AIDS and its spread, the article uses permutation theory to relate AIDS to male-female relationships and the development of intimate relalionships. Male-female relationships are conceptualized as consisting of four components-love, intimacy, sex and marriage-or some subset of those components. In addition, male-female relationships are divided into three eras: the pre-modern birth control era where morality dictated that marriage be sequenced before sexual intercourse; the posl-birth control pre-AIDS era where sequencing of the four components was unconstrained; and the post-AIDS era where love or intimacy increasingly occur before sexual intercourse. This article illustrates ways in which simple mathematical permutations can be applied to a complex interdisciplinary problem helping to clarify and discuss the societal implications of these types of problems.