Hi Mary! 

Thank you for trusting us here at AlterHéros!

If I understand well, while being intimate with your boyfriend, he ejaculated inside his pants while you were caressing each other. And now you fear that you might be pregnant, is that right?

I think it might be useful for you to first understand what may cause (or not) pregnancies!

First of all, to become pregnant, you need to be in your ovulation period. It is the moment in your menstrual cycle where you are the most susceptible to get pregnant. It is the moment where your body produces an egg which can be (or not!) fertilized by sperm, therefore causing a pregnancy. If you are at a moment in your menstrual cycle where you are not ovulating or are not close to the ovulation period, you can not get pregnant.

This ovulation period is often during the days before and following the 14th day before your next period. However, it can be influenced by lots of external factors, including your age, your stress level as well as many other things. Personally, I really like using a menstrual cycle tracking app on my phone, since it’s simple and convenient. 

While the knowledge of your menstrual cycle and your ovulation period might help you to know your body as well as what causes pregnancies, you still need to use protection during penetrative sex, to not only be safe from pregnancies, but also from sexually transmissible infections!

To get pregnant, there also needs to be a contact between the sperms and the egg. Now, from what I understand in your question, you didn’t have your boyfriend’s penis penetrate your vagina, is that it? If so, then rest assured that you are (most probably) not pregnant. If his sperms didn’t come in contact with your vagina, they can not swim up to your uterus to fertilize an egg, which means there is no way for a pregnancy to occur. Since you both had your pants on, the sperms couldn’t possibly go through both these layers of clothing to somehow find a way to your vagina.

​That means that you don’t really have any chances of being pregnant from that sexual encounter. If it is still something that makes you preoccupied, you can go to your local pharmacy to do a pregnancy test.

If you don’t want to go through the anxiety of being pregnant after your next sexual encounter, you can look at contraceptives options, like condoms, which are easy to find in any pharmacy. You can also ask your doctor for other options, like hormonal contraceptives.

I also recommend having a look at our “Pregnancy, reproductive health and virginity” section on our website, if you want to learn more about what can cause (or not!) pregnancies.

I hope I was able to help you with your worries! You can write to us again if you have some other questions!

Ann-So (she/her)