10 Years of herpes Chats! (Male experience!)

Hi.

I wanted to come to this site and make a post.

I’m a 33 year old Male who caught herpes from a girl I was casually seeing and having unprotected sex with.

It recently occurred to me that it’s actually been just over 10 years since I contracted Genital HSV-2 and I remember being so scared and upset about it all at the time. I thought my life would be over as I knew it. I remember reading all of the posts on sites like these and I think at the time I was trying to find out what my life with Herpes was going to be like! At the time I remember seeing some people being really very positive and others being really very negative and loads of almost religious debates about everything.

I really want to try to add to the positive side of all that debate because I really would hate for others to do the same thing I did and harbour negative thoughts and focus on the negative side because, in my case all that worrying that I did for few years after being diagnosed was completely pointless and was a complete waste of life and I can say that after nearly 10 years I’ve not missed out an anything in life whatsoever other than not pursuing things that I should have been in the couple of years after diagnosis.

Obviously, everyone has different worries but my main worry was that I would have to tell all the girls that I wanted to sleep with that I had herpes and that they would run away screaming or something! I know that people talk about this happening to them and I’m certainly not going to try to explain why that happens because I don’t know, but I can say that I’ve never had a single bad reaction from any girl that I’ve had the herpes chat with at all. I’ve had serious and casual sexual relationships in the last 10 years and I’ve told every single one and they’ve all basically shrugged it off and said ‘so what’ and have been willing to progress with me. I’m not posting any numbers up here for anyone to start talking about but my numbers are either roughly same or higher than all of my close male friends who are all very normal professionals who go out a lot socialising and are very normal chaps who have no trouble with finding relationships!

In case there is some wisdom in my experiences perhaps I can state the rules I’ve observed and experiences I’ve had when talking to girls about it:

I’ve never had the herpes chat with anyone whilst being in bed with them or whilst things are leading in a sexual direction or other sexual activities (which do not involve my risk area) are happening. Instead of trying to initiate that chat I will instead say that, it’s not the right time, or make up some excuse or anything that fits best! Humour can be very effectively applied to de-sexualise the scenario if she won’t back down. Anything said of note conversation wise that can be brought up at another non-sexualised time is useful. I’ve never had anyone running away at this point either

I’ve also applied the above rule to any highly romantic scenario, e.g. .when you are both gazing into each others eyes or after you’ve just cooked her an amazing romantic meal. I’ve been tempted to bring it up at these times, but my more sensible mind knows that there are much better times to bring up.

I have always tried to wait for a good time to naturally occur for having the chat. You would actually be amazed how many opportunities there are for this. Most obvious ones are any conversation about her STI’s, friends with STI’s, jokes made about STIs. Cold sores, friends with cold sores, someone having a cold sore at the moment. The less obvious ones are conversations about her Health problems, friends with health problems, Vaccines and viruses, Past relationships, Regrets in life, difficult times you’ve had in life, things you’ve found hard etc. etc.

I’ve found opportunities like these to come up more times than you think they would, but if I’m really stuck or I just want to get things moving, I will just engineer one of the above conversations and take it from there.

I’ve always tried to have the conversation in a way that states the facts of what happened for me to acquire herpes in a confident and honest way and described how it’s affected me, ending with the statement that explains why I need to have this conversation with people that I meet and want to progress with. I’ve got better at this the more times I’ve done it and probably everyone has a different story, but I feel like something that helps is to remember that you’ve done nothing wrong and not appear like you are telling them some horrible secret.

I will always try to apply humour to my situation if possible perhaps by saying something like ‘so, yeah this the best part about being me and having to have this chat obviously!’. Or if I suspect that it’s the right sort of mood or if I suspect she may have had unprotected sex at some stage I’ll say something like ‘so, yeah thats what happened to me when I slept with a girl I met without a condom’

I avoid the temptation to say anything subjective about the symptoms of herpes or what it might or might not be like for anyone else to have it

This only happened with one girl, but I avoid the temptation to become ‘herpes doctor’ if they don’t know anything about it and are desperate to know everything about it. I’m highly knowledgable about the virus and I’ve probably read every piece of medical literature about it, but it’s not my place get technical or talk massively in depth about it at this time with them. If they don’t know anything about it I’ll state basic facts about the fact that it’s contagious etc. but I’ll insist that they go away and read about it if they are desperate to know details and then after that I’ll talk about it with them in depth. Remembering that it’s just cold sore can help to provide a short explanation and end any escalating demand for information I would personally avoid providing anyone with sources of information to read about it and I’ve never been asked for it, but I would feel like I was leading someone down a garden path if I was the one explaining risks and informing them. Let them research it on their own or talk to their friends/family about it if they need to go into it all immediately.

I never try to ask for a reaction or keep the conversation going longer than it needs to. I usually end with something funny wait for some sort of response and if it doesn't come then I'll move on to some other topic.

The last thing that I think has helped me is telling some of my close friends about my herpes status and laughing about preparation for the h-chat with them. I think that small things like sending a quick message to a mate about h-chat status etc. sort of helps a bit. Makes me feel like I’m not on my own with it and i’ve got support. As I’ve said it’s never actually happened to me, but if someone did run away screaming I reckon talking to mates about that and laughing about it would really help!

So, yes, to re-state the reason for my post - I hope that others who are newly diagnosed can weigh this experience up against all of the negative things and bad experiences that people talk about and hopefully realise that herpes is definitely not the terrible life changing disease that you might think it is in the difficult time when coming to terms with a new diagnosis!

Cheers!

Wow, Thank you so much for this post. Im 3 months in and still having whirlwind emotions about it. It gives me hope that i will be able to live without the fear of being rejected and the guilt and shame.

This was an awesome read! Thanks for sharing :)

@guywithhsv

Hello and Welcome!

Thank you SOOOOO much for this! We tend to be a female-heavy forum here and we are always having guys asking for a male POV ... so I'm going to add this to my list of links .... you gave some great tips and I know this will be a great help to many who come on here.

I hope you don't mind but I'm going to add this to the Herpes Veterans section because I like to send people there when they have concerns about the longer term effects on their lives.....

I also hope you will stick around and support some of the newbies when you can ... especially the guys ... we need more men on here both to help the new guys to not feel as alone among the plethora of female postings on here!!!!

(((HUGS)))

Thank you so kuch for this detailed post,

Your honesty, and ideas and ways to nave the talk are really insightful. Ive had it for 5 months, and only told close friends, and havent been able to imagine how I would go about doing this with a romantic partner. Very interesting about you not being the herpes doctor as you put it. I had always thpught of providing them the hopp hand outs with the intro and facts, but it sounds like you just explain that you got it, how, and relate it to cold sores being in a private area, and the rest of the research is up to them?

ill be bookmarking this post, as wcsdancer said great to have male perspective.

@sw85

One risk of letting the other person do all their own research is simply that

Dr Google is a quack and they can come across a whole lot of really bad and scary info ... so while this may have worked for @guywithhsv to let them make their own research, it's totally backfired for others on here ....

Again - there's no one "right" way to do this and you have to find what works for you... :)

i love your attitude. Definitely been working on shifting mine (especially since I've had some much more positive experiences lately....my first person didn't run screaming, but literally got up in the middle of our conversation and walked out of my house, so it was pretty traumatizing). Regardless, I love the idea of texting a mate to joke about it.I tend to text my friends freaking out about the potential talk, but what is going to happen will happen regardless, and your way is much less of a negative energy creator.

I have found the more people I tell, the better I feel. I still dont' tell everyone (and in fact, I think I need to make sure I'm careful about who I can trust) but being open and trying not to feel shame is so, so important.

Thanks so much for writing.

Thank you, guywithhsv ! You have a great attitude! You really are a kind, respectful and honest guy! I got herpes 1 genital 6 weeks ago. I am married for 22 years. And been in an open marriage for 12 months. Yes, WCSDancer2010, is correct in saying that Mr.Google herpes research can backfire! My husband researched online and found that he has a 70% chance of getting herpes 1 genital from me. Yet, on this site the statistics are VERY different. He doesn't know who to trust? And I don't want to feel like I must convince him to stay with me.

@Arial .... do you have the source for the stats that we use that @tallBB could send to her hubby? Not to convince him to stay, but to show him the study so he gets that his resources are.. er...questionable.....?

This is an amazing post! Thank you!

Guywithhsv.....your post is very well written and I like your coming out style very much. Can I ask if you use condoms or anti viral and if you know whether or not you ever passed it on?

To me the worst part of having the herpes chat is that it's boring. And having to do it every time is annoying. Like being in the movie Groundhog Day.