dawn113

You guys are seriously amazing. I am smiling reading these responses... thank you for all of your support and answers to my questions I have asked a couple doctors and they shimmy around answers and finally I feel like I have a good grasp on things. I am glad that I gave herry some hope and dancer some good emotions :) thank you for everything. It feels good to get a pat on the back that I am being a good support system for him and I love that others can read this and see that they are also worthy of having someone love and accept them regardless of any "flaw" if you would even consider it that. One thing I think about is that I have honestly had more sexual partners then he has and I should be the one who has it, and like dancer said who knows maybe I actually do. I am not better than him because I got lucky enough to sleep with people who are also lucky enough to have not contracted anything. Ignorant people have no perspective on the issue, and I am thankful that I have a place where I can talk about these things and receive positive feedback rather than judgment. THANKS!

First of all, I have been navigating through this site for a couple weeks now and want to say thank you to all of you for this wonderful, safe place of information! So I am female, 23 and H-... My best friend of ten years is a male and recently I went back home for Christmas to see my family and one night when I went out with my friend, we drunkenly admitted to both being in love with each other and it was this huge romantic story story (well excluding the fact we were drunk) that would make most people gag hearing so I'll cut it short :). I flew back to where I live now and we started discussing that we want to date (no sexual contact happened) and I was being very open about the fact that I wanted to date and him to move out here with me. That's when the talk came into play. He told me that he got genital herpes type 2 from an ex girlfriend 4 years ago. In the one year he has been single he has dated on girl and never gave it to her. Hes on the medication and has everything really well managed. He kept saying over and over, "I understand if this is a deal breaker, we can pretend nothing happened and go back to being best friends." Well for me when he told me he needed to tell me something my mind actually automatically went to "he has herpes or HIV" so when the txt came I already was expecting it, but reading it I would be lying if I said it didn't bother me. It never crossed my mind that it would be a deal breaker though. I honestly just felt so bad for him because he is such a nice guy and he is so shy and quiet that I can't fathom how he's been dealing with this. I also had about ten thousand questions for him, most of which I started asking right then and some of which I still ask whenever I think of them but he was so amazing and answered everything honestly and I just appreciated that so much. He is coming in two weeks to visit and I know that we will have sex so I have been educating myself so much. ****My main concern honestly is about giving oral sex. If I give him oral, am I going to get sores around my mouth? I am pretty sure I don't have type 1 because I have never had a cold sore and none of my immediate family has either... but obviously I very well could.. and oral with a condom just seems like a waste of time to be honest so I am fairly concerned about this. I obviously do not want to get genital herpes but if it happens I don't view it as the end of the world, I would however be really devastated to have sores around my mouth.. (Whatever you do, do NOT google image herpes.. now all I can imagine is my face looking like that and I am mortified).. Do you think that chances of transmission are lesser after a shower or in a shower? I did read in other posts about the alcohol application and might try that. Also, does he need to be wearing boxers while we spoon and cuddle in bed? Is it weird that part of me thinks about just getting the disease from him once we're married so we don't have to worry about it anymore? Am I totally out of touch with reality for thinking that? One thing that I recently txt him was "I've told you that I accept this part of you and that we're gonna deal with this together. SO I want you to promise me you'll work on knowing I mean that and accepting yourself for having it. There's nothing you can do about it so you have to think positive and not let it weigh you down and effect our relationship on an emotional level." He was very thankful for that and was super touched by me saying that but, I would like some advice to keep him having that mindset? He really lets this get him down and he holds a lot of shame and guilt.... This is getting really long. I guess I just wanted to share this and let you all know that there are people out there that are more than willing to accept this and you are still lovable. Keep your head up and love yourself first of all. Always be honest with people in your life and inform them that you have H before you sleep with them... if they leave then good! They weren't worth it anyway. If they stay, then woot! you've found yourself a winner. Like dancer always says, H is a great wingman :) This also helped me so much, on this websites "informational blog" there is a section discussing the stigma about herpes, and it reads.. HSV1 and HSV2 have been around for about 4500 years and was for the majority of that time just a minor skin condition that no one really gave a second thought to. It was just like having a cold. Everyone would get a cold sometimes and with HSV they would get an outbreak. It was never a big deal. Living with HSV was just the way it was up until 1975. That’s right! It has only been an issue for 36 of those 4500 years. So what is the fuss about? Why are we so ashamed now to have this virus when for so long people had it and no one cared? Why do we care now? During the research and development of the drug Acyclovir (Zovirax) it was mentioned there was no market for this drug because most people had never heard of genital Herpes before. The solution? Market the virus. A campaign was launched to raise awareness of the virus and the way it can be spread sexually. The Burroughs/Wellcome marketing campaign’s goal was to stimulate the need for the drug by alarming (disease mongering) the patients of the social consequences of infection and emphasizing that the drug could help to prevent transmission. FASCINATING!!!