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.