MplsMan

Why, yes, I'd like to talk about sex with you. :-) I just recently went through my "first sex" with a partner I recently disclosed to. Before we got naked, I had the Herpes Opportunity Talk Part II: Psychological Ramifications. I explained that I hadn't had sex in a long time in a meaningful way and I was nervous. I worried and wondered about things, transmissions, would he have regrets, etc. And in men, this kind of worrying can lead to...well, a certain "softening." So we agreed that my new beau would spend the night. We might have sex...we might not. It all depended on how things felt in the moment. This took ALL the pressure off our first sexual experience to happen that night or for it to go a certain way...because hey, it might not even happen that first night we had sex. Honestly, I wasn't sure how easily I could sleep next to another person again. I had made myself into this 'disease-carrying-monster' in my head for a few years, so I was uneasy just with nudity. But we snuggled in bed, talked, and in fact, we went to bed without being sexually active. The morning was a different story, however. Something changed...the lack of pressure made me relaxed and ready. We ended up having a very sweet Naked Play Time but part of the reason it went well was because it didn't have to happen. Take the pressure off yourself and when the time is right, I predict sex will feel a lot more natural. MplsMan

Luckyme, read all the posts in this forum. Seriously - there's lots of wisdom here and lots of pain. Both help me sweep out the dark corners of my psyche where my resentment live. I just finished fml's posts a few minutes ago (different thread) and I wanted to crawl under the covers where she's been hiding and hold her while she bawls her eyes out. I felt so sad reading her story and thought it was so courageous of her to share her rage with all of us. And then I thought about me - how could I have such compassion for fml and be so mean to myself for years about the same exact condition? I would *never* be mean to anyone in the real world like I was to myself...the horrible self-messages I sent to myself. Reading fml's story (and others) remind me where I need to show compassion to myself and how to soften my self-judgment into a greater kindness. MplsMan

This dialog is so refreshing! Thank you, fml for all of it: rage, despair, giving up, resenting your giver...I appreciate your being "a cynical bitter asshole." Yay! Me too! ha ha... For years I raged about the injustice of this. I was *not* a promiscuous person! I did not fuck around indiscriminately! How could the shitty world work this way when I hadn't done anything to deserve this? Honestly, I didn't think that people with herpes deserved their diagnosis...I just didn't think about it much. Very unfortunate for them, but that was them and not my problem. In a post a while ago, I advocated this fantastic graphic novel called Monsters by Ken Dahl. (I included an amazon.com link, though maybe your local library carries it, too). On one page, he imagined his own newspaper obituary that read something like this: LOCAL MAN COMMITS SUICIDE OVER HERPES. The 'sub-headline' was something like: 'World Can't Believe How Shallow He Is." Somehow his imagined newspaper obituary captured all my bitter rage: I'd kill myself over this horrible disease if that weren't so damn pathetic. I pictured people I loved at the funeral gossiping about my death and saying, "Really? Herpes? That's why he did it?" They would shake their heads and say things under their breath like, "Loser" and "Quitter." (Nobody in my real life would ever say that...but this was my pity party and I wrote their scripts.) I knew other people had much worse predicaments in life, but this sucks too. Felt like a death sentence. And hey, I am still on my journey of acceptance, so I won't pretend to be the Big H cheerleader here. But the darkness of those years past and now, looking back, I see that I didn't have to spend YEARS in that dark place. Life chose to give me herpes and I chose my response to it. I'm sorry for your painful outbreaks. I'm sorry you have lost work and suffered sexually and emotionally. I can't take any of that away from you and you know what? I wouldn't if I could. All that misery are logs on the bonfire for creating the life you want and to try to take away your pain would insult the power you have inside you. fml, I wish that when I was raging at the shitty world for doing this to me I had had the guts to come to a website like this and share my pain with others. I didn't. I sulked, cried, and holed up at home overeating and giving up on big parts of life. I honor your courage to speak up. It's the road out of this hell. MplsMan

Great story, Ty! I'm excited that this opened doors for you instead of closing them. It's so nourishing for me to read about other peoples' great success on this path of growing in greater love, greater self-acceptance. Wow.

Hey Deevine444, My first disclosure conversation went GREAT and I was shocked that it did. I have the same opinion that you do: now that the first disclosure in a dating situation is out of the way and was such a crazy success...I can do this. I'm still dating the person I told, but if I had to do this again in the future, I know that I would. I could. And I will do it with about 5% of the fear I had the first time because I really am believing that this is an opportunity. How on earth did you get to acceptance with your diagnosis within 5 months? That's so crazy wonderful. I wasted years beating myself up and saying every unflattering thing I could think of to myself. I'm jealous that you accepted it so easily. (Jealous in a happy-for-you way.) MplsMan

The Monsters book is truly awesome. Discovered it on vacation in Portland, OR and it just lifted this giant weight of my sadness. There's something about the way he illustrates that can be both funny and heartbreaking. There's a scene where the main character is at a party. All around him people are flirting and kissing and he's standing in the middle of the room with a blank expression on his face with this big 'germ bubble' around him. I've been there. I've felt that. Nah, don't make a video making fun of yourself. I think your earnestness is necessary. I appreciated your courage in filming yourself even if I rolled my eyes about the 'opportunity.' Still, your genuineness and faith that it really *is* an opportunity did win me over. (Even though I'm a grumbler.) If you want to put your comedic talents to use, how about a "Shit people say when you tell them you have herpes." Those seem to be very popular right now. And really, it's good to laugh about this, isn't it? I've read some other posts where people referred to this as "herp" and that made me chuckle. Anything to take some power away from the stigma.

I first off, want to say thank you to this site creator. I haven't seen your name on the site, so I'll just say, "Hey guy...thanks." You'll see why in a moment. I was diagnosed four years ago. It was the end of the world. I was so ashamed to have acquired "the slut disease," the STD on TV and in movies where it's socially acceptable (and gosh, hilarious!) to associate whoever gets it with being a whore. Like many of you, I was devastated and honestly, never worried about the disclosure conversation because I decided to never have sex or date or be in love again. Fuck. That. I stayed in this place for two years, ashamed and alone. I told a couple good friends and they loved me and that felt great. Even encouraged me to date and sent me links to herpes/singles websites, which just depressed me further. But they tried. And as you know, we suffer this disease alone. Even loving friends can't *get* how utterly crushing this is. I did some work on myself, the kind of work our host advocates in his herpes life coaching. Learned to see myself as "not the disease." That was hard. I had to work through all kinds of shit about me that was NOT herpes-related but having this diagnosis brought it to the forefront and yeah, I am able to see this as a good thing. Some people learn life lessons through losing a child, having cancer, getting HIV...all opportunities to grow self-love and compassion in the world. I got off easy in getting herpes. One turning point - an amazing resource that will rock your whole world - is a graphic novel about one man's journey with herpes. His illustrations about his pain, isolation, feeling like a walking disease - all of it - shocked me. He was able to draw the pain in my heart! It was so validating to have someone articulate how shameful and sad this journey has been, how it's hard not to give up and decide, "I am a disease." He got it. I began to see the world differently after this book. I am putting a link to it on amazon.com. I emailed the guy a few times, telling him what his graphic novel did for me and my heart, my perspective. He was cool. http://www.amazon.com/Monsters-Ken-Dahl/dp/0979960940 Around Christmas of this year, I met a guy and for the first time in YEARS, I wanted to date someone. He's charming, an artist, and sweet. I felt ill the same time I felt attraction to him because this meant I now had to think about having THE TALK. I told him I wanted to go slow: no sex. I figured that if I wasn't ready for THE TALK, we could date a few times and I could take the coward's way out, saying I wasn't feeling the vibe or it wouldn't work, etc. And it might not be a lie - you can tell within a few dates if the person you're with is not compatible. But dammit, I liked him. A lot. And we were really hitting it off. Great physical chemistry, fun common interests, and we have argued with each other with kindness, so all the right signs. He thinks I'm funny. I like his art. Crap. I decided this past weekend it was time. In googling around, I discovered this awesome website. I watched the vids about disclosing and thought about despite how far I've come on this journey, how I still have more to go. I was going to bring this up in a "This probably will make you want to stop dating me, but here goes" kind of way. Doom. Gloom. Misery. I would practically dare this guy to reject me. I learned here to approach this as an opportunity. I gotta admit, those words felt really cheesy to me. I am an upbeat guy, but c'mon, man ... it's fucking herpes, not "I got a bad tattoo when I was 24." Nevertheless, I decided to approach this as advocated here: heart-open, vulnerable, accepting of his potential preference to not date someone with herpes. My original instinct was to overwhelm him with facts ... but after visiting this site and learning here, I decided to resist printout pages and let this be a conversation, not a one-sided lecture from me about herpes. When the time came, I thought I would throw up. We had finished eating take-out Mexican and watching a movie on my couch. I excused myself to the bathroom to look myself in the eye, give myself a little pep talk: However this worked out, I would be okay. Better than okay. Awesome. I had the opportunity to do something really fucking hard – and do it with integrity. I went back to the living room and said in a casual voice, "Hey, I need to talk to you about something important to me. I want to talk to you about why I haven't dated anyone in the past four years." I talked about how much I liked the vibe between us, how I felt it growing. How I wanted us to grow closer, but needed to share this. I told my story, summarizing my journey. While I had originally thought of using all kinds of euphemisms during the conversation like, "I get cold sores below the belt" or "I have the HSV virus," I made myself say the words, "I have herpes." I won't lie: it was horrible to say that out loud. He listened. I explained that if this was a deal-breaker, I would understand. I'd be bummed, but I'd understand. I tried to be non-judgmental and said, that even if we stopped dating, I enjoyed our time together and I thought he was cool. I thanked him because I hadn't felt like dating anyone in four years, and he showed me it was possible to open my heart again. He threw his arms around me and launched himself onto my lips. On a break from the kissing, he said, "SO not a dealbreaker." We talked about it for another 20 minutes, and I think we will continue to talk further. We talked about precautions, I gave him statistics, talked about the meds I am on. I talked about how this physical impediment has had psychological impacts on me and I am nervous about having sex with him and this being present between us. We agreed to take it kinda slow, sexually, as I come back from being "lost in the desert" around sex. I won't lie. It was hard. A few trickling tears came out of my eyes when I tried to tell him how hard this has been. There was a part of my inside screaming, I HATE THIS, I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO DO THIS ... But there you go. Then, we made out for a half-hour on my couch. :-) During a kissing break, he looked into my eyes and said, "I feel so much closer to you right now. And I know I can trust you even more because you put my safety first even though it was really hard for you." Holy crap — that's *exactly* what this website promised: the herpes opportunity! That's what I thought of, too, when he said that. This website promised it could be an opportunity and while the cynical part of me scoffed and said, "I'd rather pass on this opportunity," that's exactly how this turned out. Later I sent him a txt saying, "I am still smiling." He replied saying, "I am so happy right now." Who knew? Don't give up.