I'm late 40s. Lesbian.
Have been with three or four men, but after my mid-20s only women.
I'm going crazy trying to figure out where I got this.
I have never experienced an "outbreak."
BUT!!!!
When I was a child, I had lots of "bladder infections." I'm wondering if my doctor back then just assumed they were all bladder infections and simply prescribed me antibiotics without testing my urine to make sure they were actually bladder infections.
Back then things were different. People were in denial about sexual abuse. Probably even family doctors wouldn't even DREAM a nine-year-old had contracted hsv2.
That said, I don't remember being sexually molested but I had a pretty emotionally traumatic childhood and have blocked out a lot of my past.
I recently posed these concerns to my mom and she said my bladder infections were accompanied by fevers, but hsv2 can be accompanied by fevers too.
Considering the path of virus--that the initial outbreaks are the worst and then things taper off from there--it seems like these "bladder infections" could actually have been hsv2 outbreaks.
Thoughts?
P.S. I only got tested because my current gf teased me that my lips peeled a lot. I knew it wasn't hsv1 but sun damage, but I wanted to prove it to her. So for the first, I think, time in my life I asked for an hsv2 test. It came up negative for hsv1 but positive for hsv2.
P.P.S. The girlfriend didn't have the greatest reaction when I initially told her. Then she took the test and came back positive for hsv1 and negative for hsv2. Life is weird.