cpdx

Thank you all so very much for your responses! It means a lot to me to hear from folks who have life experience with H, and how you deal with it in your relationships. @PositivelyBeautiful - I agree that the 'what ifs' are what is driving this situation, and that is probably the hardest part for me to accept. Thank you for your advice on giving him space to mull this over on his own time! @whitedaisies - I appreciate you giving the statistics on infection rates when both condoms and antivirals are used. It's comforting that there are proven methods to drastically minimize the risk of infection, and it helps to keep things in perspective. @caterpillarmonarch - Thank you so much for sharing your viewpoint. I'm guilty of struggling to see the H+ side of this, and what you wrote really helped me to understand how my bf must be feeling. I'm sorry you're struggling in much the same way as my bf is, but it sounds like you have a great guy there! @WCSDancer2010 - Last night, my bf said exactly what you stated: that he was having trouble delineating where his responsibility ended, and mine began. I definitely feel like he has taken on the lion's share of responsibility for my health, and it's beginning to weigh him down. Again, thank you all for your kind words and support!

So let me preface this with the fact that I am totally, 100%, balls-to-the-wall, head-over-heels, batshyte crazy about my current boyfriend of 10 months. He is an amazing, caring, loving, funny, honest, and humble man. He is also living with herpes, and I am (currently) not. Several months ago, a discussion came up where he essentially gave me the choice to leave him then in the interest of self-preservation. He said he wouldn't hold my decision to leave against me, because he understood how I might feel about the possibility of becoming infected. After giving the issue some thought, and doing a fair amount of research into how best to protect ourselves, and what the odds were of getting infected, I decided to follow my heart and stay with him. It was really a no-brainer given how much I love him, but I nevertheless feel that I made a well-informed decision. However, he has had two outbreaks in the past several weeks, the second one starting this past Friday. When he sat down with me to discuss it, he said he no longer felt OK with the possibility of infecting me. He told me of the viral shedding that occurs even between outbreaks (I had already learned about this from my previous research), and that even flawless condom use wouldn't protect me completely. He insisted that if he infected me, and we ever broke up, that I would hate him for the rest of my life, and that he couldn't live with that. For the time being, at least, things are on hold while he does some soul searching. So here I sit, feeling heartbroken and powerless. So what can I do? When we discus this again, what can I say to help him make the best decision for him? For us? I suppose what I need to hear is what other mixed status couples' experiences have been, and also what options lie before us to help put both of our minds at ease about the possibility of infection. If you made it this far, thank you for reading, and thank you all for being here. My boyfriend and I are in a dark place right now, and I don't know where else to turn to for help.