Dating bed bugs

New York (CNN) -- You have heard of the seven-year itch in marriage.Now, the itch caused by bedbugs is causing relationships to come under even more pressure.If anything, the thought of harboring a mattress full of the little brown buggers without realizing it is all the more skin-crawling.But it's not like there's a reasonable, foolproof way for a man to avoid the threat of an infestation.

But as long as his clothes have been thoroughly sanitized, it's OK to bring him home with you.

But last time I'd been single (and it was in a year starting with a one), the danger hadn't so much been literal critters as very different kinds of bugs: herpes, HPV, chlamydia.

The kinds of sexually transmitted diseases that still hang with about one in five Americans, but whose stigma has oddly abated.

He said that's "because they were scared to death about bugs.

She wouldn't date him because he had bedbugs, and she freaked out." The fear of bedbugs is also heightening intimacy tensions.