Herpes transmission in my lesbian relationship?

[herloveisadrug]

Hi everyone, my name is RauNeisha and I have herpes for almost 5 years now. I am currently in a same sex relationship with a girl I consider my best friend. I told her 4 months into the relationship that I have herpes and she understood and did not judge me. Recently I have been looking up ways to introduce sex into our relationship, when I stumbled onto this website (THANK YOU for whoever made this site), after reading some of the stories on here I became very happy or shall I say hopefull that I can have a sexual relationship with my girlfriend but also nervous at the same time that I could give it to her or she reject me. I have been looking up and printing out things so that she can see that people have been in relationships for a long period of time or just in short term relationships and have not got it from their partners. I don't think she is scared, I just think she is unaware and unsure of the disease because it is so new to her. Anyways, I don't know or think I have had an outbreak since discovering I have had herpes, is that normal? Also, I have not started any supplemental pills yet to lessen my outbreaks and make sure my partner stays safe. I am going to start those on my next doctors visit. My question for anyone reading this post is... Am I forgetting anything important that I should let my girlfriend know and if anyone can tell me of all the different types of outbreaks that can be happening to me without me knowing. I am confussed and want to get everything right before making that next step with her. Thank You for your time and response. :)

[mr_hopp]

Hi! And you're welcome! Always feels good to hear people sharing how this website and Opportunity movement is positively impacting people. And it's so BEAUTIFUL to hear you say that your partner is also your best friend. I love that. Congratulations on what sounds like quite a wonderful fit of two human beings. ;)

 

To answer your questions, 15-20% of people who have HSV-2 never have any signs or symptoms. Ever. But that doesn't mean that their herpes isn't still contagious, thanks to viral shedding. Read these blog posts for more on those topics:

http://herpeslife.com/what-is-herpes-asymptomatic-viral-shedding/

http://herpeslife.com/how-can-you-get-herpes/

 

Starting on suppressive therapy will help a lot. It will lessen the viral shedding by 50-80% and lessen the chances of passing herpes to your partner by 50% (according to studies). How you have sex will determine the chances of spreading it or not. If you get friction involved vagina-to-vagina, there is a 10% chance of spreading herpes from your vagina to hers (5% if you're on suppressive therapy). Oral sex is absolutely fine and there is only a 1% chance of spreading it from vagina to mouth since HSV-2 overwhelmingly prefers the down-low environment. ;) Here's a blog article on that:

http://herpeslife.com/spreading-genital-herpes-hsv2-from-oral-sex

 

Read these handouts for a summary of all these statistics:

http://bit.ly/h-opp-diagnosis-handout

http://bit.ly/h-opp-disclosure-handout

 

Thanks for reaching out here and please let us know if you have any other questions! Knowledge is power AND an opportunity for true intimacy. Love shamelessly. :)

[Abailey143]

Love love love this info since it's so hard to find resources concerning lesbian sex. My question is... How many people were in the study for the 5% chance (with suppressive therapy) of transmitting? I've been researching quite a bit and haven't been able to find the study. I'd like to have valid information to present.

 

I'm also curious how many people were in the oral study resulting in 1%?

 

Thank you so much for your help and again, thank you for presenting stats for us ladies:)

[WCSDancer2010]

@Abailey143

 

I am not sure if there were lesbian couples in those studies ... Adrial may know more. But to correct your numbers, women have a 10% risk with no protection ... BUT in a lesbian relationship, a lot will depend on if you "grind" or if you do more oral sex, or toys or whatever. Transmission is by far and away highest with grinding because of the skin on skin contact. Toys should be cleaned or covered with a condom and not shared without cleaning.

 

The 1% with oral ... again, I don't know the numbers but they are significant enough to be considered sound. That 1% is for HSV2 by the way ... if you had genital HSV1, then the risk would be higher because H1 prefers the mouth....

 

Hopefully Adrial will chime in after this weekend. We are currently at the Herpes Opportunity weekend so he is focused on facilitating this event until Monday.

 

(((HUGS)))

[MoonstoneGoddess27]

Thank you for this article. It's really helped a lot.