Ask Bish - Your Sex and Relationships Questions Answered

Ask Bish Really Stressed About Dry Humping and Pregnancy

It’s not easy getting pregnant, and it’s much much much harder getting pregnant if you don’t have penis in vagina sex. Here I try to help de-stress someone who thinks she might be.

Hi Bish.

I am a 22 year old university student, who has never dated until last summer. I dry humped with my boyfriend on the 8th day from the start of my last period. I was fully clothed while he was only in his underwear. He ejaculated on me in which the spot of my shorts above my vagina was wet. However, since it was the end of my period, I had a panty liner (small sanitary pad) on. I then went to the toilet, sat down on the toilet bowl and pulled down my shorts and found that a spot a few inches above my private area was wet, so I guess his cum penetrated through my shorts, underwear and got onto my stomach skin. I remember I wiped it off but I cannot remember if I used the same toilet tissue and wiped myself.

To be honest, I have been quite stressed over the few days. It is now the 18th day since the start of my last cycle, I had thick clear vaginal discharge over the last three days. Today however after a cup of coffee with a friend, I saw a very small tint of red in my discharge, literally like a small pixel of red. I had slight cramps over the days. I have regular menses [periods] and I was diagnosed to have a small fibroid in my uterus area a year ago. I am just wondering if I could be pregnant? I talked to my boyfriend, he said it’s really impossible. I have studied science but in situations like this, it really freaks you out. So I’m really stressed out, I swear I’d never do dry humping ever again, because I’m just too scared. I’m hoping you could tell me if it’s possible to get pregnant this way?

Hey there

Thanks for your question. I did say at my Ask Bish page to please read my all the answers I’ve given about this before asking a question about whether it’s possible to get pregnant from non penis in vagina sex. But I’m answering because you sound really stressed out and that stresses me out a bit. So here goes …

As I’ve said elsewhere on the website I can’t say that it is impossible to get pregnant from this, but I’d say it’s 99.999999999999999999999999% impossible. Sperm aren’t nearly as magic as you suggest they might be. In order to get you pregnant they would have had to get through fabric, travel across your pubic area into your vagina (or have survived being wiped dry on a tissue) before then navigating past the cervix, into the womb and fallopian tubes and then hang around for a few days before ovulation.

So I can’t say it’s impossible, but I can say that it is MASSIVELY MASSIVELY unlikely.

You can learn more about fertility and why it’s actually quite hard to get pregnant here. In fact as you say that you have regular periods you can probably work out when your fertile and non fertile times are there. It sounds to me like you have maybe just ovulated (sometimes a very small amount of blood can be present in between periods after ovulation, the cramps you are describing could be Mittelschmerz which is cramping around ovulation time, also discharge returns to being thickish, sticky and white after ovulation,), which means that you probably aren’t having a short menstrual cycle at the moment which probably means that even if any of those sperm did get inside you then they would have had to live for much much longer than the 5/7 days for which they stay alive for.

So look at all the science, all the facts, all the evidence and you could conclude that it is very very unlikely that you are pregnant or can get pregnant from dry humping. In fact, I think you maybe know all of this. Maybe you need me to set your mind at rest (I hope I have) but maybe it won’t. Perhaps think about your response to this and other things in your life. Do you get this anxious about other things? Are you able to let go of things and brush them off or do you keep going over and over things? If the latter is the case you may want to think about talking to someone about your fears? Maybe there’s a student counsellor, or another healthcare practitioner you could talk to?

Maybe it’s just to do with sex. In which case you can help yourself to overcome some of these fears around pregnancy by getting to know your body more, but also by having the kind of sex which you know is not going to lead to pregnancy (or STIs for that matter). Try looking at this page for more ideas on different kinds of sex you can have with each other. Maybe you’ll feel less stressed about having sex where your genitals aren’t rubbing up against each other. Mutual masturbation, massages, snogging etc etc …. If you are into dry humping then he could wear condoms to make it even safer than it already is (this would add quite a lot more 9s to the number I gave above) or you could only do it in the time of your cycle when you know you can’t get pregnant.

It’s about being sensible about your risks (there are always some risks in sex, physical or emotional), lowering them as much as you can and enjoying the sex that you want to have as much as possible. If you are able to make more room in your head for the pleasures of sex with someone you really like, then maybe your fears about the risks will seem a bit smaller. It also comes with practice (so to speak).

Hope this helps

Justin (Bish)

© Justin Hancock, 2013