Whattodonow

I understand your feelings of stupidity and making bad decisions. Me too. I've done some really stupid stuff sexually. It seems like when I get really turned on my brain turns off. I did something similar as well and most likely infected someone unintentionally. And I am currently wallowing in shame for hurting someone. It's incapacitating. Maybe our reactions are not rational. Maybe we aren't at a place yet where we can be kind to ourselves. But the way we feel is very real. Please know that you aren't alone. I feel alone, too, and it gives me hope to see that there are others who make similar mistakes. We are just human. Fallible.

Hi everyone. I'm new here but herpes is not new in my life. I am in the process of divorcing my husband of eight years. We had been friends for fifteen years before we started dating. So once we started dating things moved very fast and we were married in four months. A month after we got married I came down with what I thought was the flu. Then a week later I had a herpes outbreak. I was mortified. He was my second marriage and I had been with plenty of people in my past but I really wanted this man to be able to trust me completely. I had at that time figured out he had some pretty serious trust issues. I figured when I told him he would think i cheated on him. In retrospect, all these years later, I figure he already knew he had herpes and never told me. His response to my outbreak was just too calm. And in retrospect I now know all the other information he withheld about other things. (A whole different conversation). So I silently bore this herpes burden, because we NEVER talked about it openly, where it came from, how it affected us, and so forth. He never had a visible outbreak that I saw - ever - in eight years. Fast forward to now... We've been apart since February. I got horny. It has been my experience that fuck buddies fall into my lap when I am in between real relationships. And that happened this time too. This young guy and I had sort of become friends at work over the last couple of years. I moved away and moved back but when I moved back I was single and our interactions became more flirtatious. I'm forty and he is twenty five. It seemed the perfect thing - he was hot and young, strong sex drive, all of his hair, no baggage, no desire for a real relationship, and too much age difference between us to even entertain having a real relationship. The thing was he was a really nice guy - a good human being. And this is what happened that I hope the rest of you have the courage to never replicate.... I knew I had herpes. Did not know what type. So when we started flirting I had my doctor get me a script. She wrote it for acyclovir. I noticed that my last script from years before (still in the cabinet because I never had outbreaks and only used it before giving birth) was for valacyclovir. I was pretty sure they did the same thing. I started taking the acyclovir. On the days when we were going to be together I took extra. We used condoms. BUT.... before the last time we had sex I felt a little of the weird nerve sensation like before an outbreak. I lied in my head and said it was my imagination. We had sex, oral as well. After he left the sensations got more pronounced. I couldn't sleep, worried sick I had hurt him. Texted him the next day and asked to meet to talk. He knew something was up and said he was worried but wouldn't talk to me. By this time I had an actual outbreak in spite of the meds. I have a huge conscience and I was accepting the reality that I had to divulge my cowardice to this guy in a fucking text message and explain to him how might possibly have forever altered his beautiful young life and how I robbed him of the power of choice by not being forthright with my disease. I'm sure he is devastated. He has not answered any texts. I'm sure he hates my guts. But the very worst part is that I violated him by not being honest from the beginning. And why? Because I was a coward. Because I had never had to talk about it. Because it was a silent horror that lived within me. And now it's probably his silent horror too.