It's definitely blown out of proportion

sometimes I truly feel hsv is blown out of proportion, I'll admit when I found out I had hsv 2 with no warning and a full On outbreak my soul was broken and I was suicidal , but now I look back on everything, it's really not that serious, I think when ppl see pictures of genital herpes online it can look gross and make u wanna run the opposite way if someone was to tell someone they have it, my doctor straight out told me it's not a death sentence , you gonna be fine, your a healthy kid, i believe majority of ppl really don't care about herpes weather it's 1or 2 th fact that you can get this with no symptoms and a condom show you right there it has to be more common than anything , like god forbid I was to find out I had hiv ,my reaction would have been total different outcome than finding out about herpes

The pictures thing is really interesting. If you type in "cold sores" or "oral herpes" or "genital herpes" you will see different visual representations of severity, even though they all should be the same. And of course most people don't have symptoms obvious enough to be captured in a picture anyway. The genital herpes pictures seem to represent primary outbreaks. And again, many people don't experience that. 80-90% of people with HSV2 do not experience a noticeable primary outbreak.

I recently had an experience with an HSV2+ partner (we met by coincidence) who mentioned he had just started an outbreak but wanted to have sex anyway. He was asking if I was okay with that. I also have HSV2 and we'd been seeing each other off and on for a long time and this had never come up because I've never had a recognizable outbreak and he rarely has outbreaks. I hadn't really thought through how I would deal with this and didn't want to make a snap decision so I suggested a hand job. Even though he told me the outbreak was on his shaft, it was mild enough that I didn't see it or feel it, even though he told me it was there and I was positioned in such a way that I would have expected to see it clearly. It was also mild enough for him to want to engage in sex and have it be pleasurable. It was a good learning experience for me.

Wow that's so interesting that's why a lot of ppl dont realize they have it and spreading it silently, I wish I never got the full on outbreak I did because it is traumatizing in a way like those images are kind of stuck in my head

I am very open about my HSV2. Because it has an undeserved stigma attached to it. It is super common. YES it sucks!! I would love a cure!!! But people seem to think that if they so much as shake hands with you, they will get it! I try to educate everyone that knows I have it.

@Lifegoesonn

I agree. I'm still enduring my first outbreak and it is absolutely terrible. The pain is unlike anything I've ever felt.

The images are stuck in my head too!

Yeah I would say seeing the lesion on me deff traumatized me in a way but as long as I don't go through that horrific outbreak again I will live , i know the pain it feel like death but once everything goes back to normal U will too

sometimes I truly feel hsv is blown out of proportion

Sometimes? No, it's definitely blown way out of proportion! It's an unwarranted stigma, designed a long time ago by the pharmaceutical companies. HSV really isn't a big deal.