What are the chances of catching an STD during unprotected?

[inexperiencedpunter]

Hi, I originally posted this over at ukpunting.com but they immediately banned me for some reason. Anyway I don't know much about STDs apart from it seems that there is a lot of scare mongering related to them. As far as I know, STDs cannot be created by having unprotected sex, they can only be caught if the other person has them.

Now bare in mind I am not talking about the curable ones, only the non curable ones which are life changing and don't have any symptoms to indicate that you have them. From internet research it would appear that the main big bad, HIV, only has a 1 in 3000 transmission rate if you aren't wearing a condom. And there are only 1040000 people in the UK with HIV in the first place, that is a tiny amount, less than .5% of a 68 million population. What are the chances one of the suffers would happen to be an escort? I know that there are two other life changers, HPV and Hep B which I have yet to look into.

Anyway, going by the stats, unless you are in some big run down city the chances of catching it are practically nill. But from the blanket advice of always practicing safe sex it makes me think that there must be some miss understanding from people about STDs spread. It seems people think just by having unprotected you can generate an STD somehow.

I have only started punting since December last year and due to money limitations I have only seen four escorts and practiced safe sex each time using a condom apart from one time when it broke and we realised after a minute and put a new one on.

What made me think of this subject was that I recently visited an escort who didn't seem too fussed about whether we used a condom or not. I almost went for her bareback but I suffer from OCD which tends to eat away at any form of doubt and I know it wouldn't have left me alone until I knew I hadn't caught any of the big diseases.

I feel like I missed an opportunity and really would like to know where I stand. I live in a quiet area of the country and I just can't see there being any dangerous STDs down here and I find it really hard to believe that the main ones are that common anywhere, even in the cities. The only thing I don't like is that the worst ones don't give symptoms like if you caught HIV you could be walking around with a death sentence over your head without even knowing it.

I am almost certain it is a silly worry, but I didn't become sexually active until I started punting so I am not knowledgeable about the subject. It will be helpful to hear from more knowledgeable people on the subject, thanks