Male go male herpes concern

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I have been bi-curious for awhile and yesterday I had the opportunity to stop at an adult book store. I had done some research on my risk, but not enough, and then didn’t follow through with my intention for safety. I went with a condom and latex gloves. I masturbated a man with my bare hands for a couple of minutes and then put a condom on him to perform oral. He did not ejaculate but then encouraged me to masturbate myself while he did the same thing to himself. This lasted less than 30 seconds as I was flaccid, if not a bit shriveled (I was a bit nervous and didn’t really feel right about it). He never touched me. This whole thing took well under ten minutes. I lathered sanitizer on my hands and penis no more than a half hour later.

I am mainly worried about herpes. I have read where I believe you say there was no risk assuming he did not have any sores (so the concern is virus shedding), which I believe was true. I really need some reassurance as my marriage will be in serious trouble, if not over, if I have contracted herpes. Several sites say no to low risk but some say a definite risk. My main question is: Is it low risk and why? I haven’t seen that explained. Based on what I have read so far, I am guessing that because the virus is so fragile, unless it finds a new host almost immediately, it dies (ten second life has been reported but is that for inanimate objects only, or can it live longer on a hand, assuming the hand is dry?). Is this right?

I understand I may need to wait for 4 months to conclusively be tested. I am a bit of a mess right now because the stakes are so high, and over such a dumb and unnecessary slip in awareness. I cannot believe I didn’t use the glove or at least not touch myself – I just keep reliving these series of events. Was the sanitizer of any value our was it too late to do any good? Also, can/should I take the medication to reduce shedding as a precautionary measure until I find out? I pray I dodged a bullet on this one.

[Terri Warren]

Nothing you did puts you at any substantial risk for herpes. I do not believe at all that you masturbating him with bare hands then you masturbating yourself puts you at risk. There needs to be a certain amount of virus present for transmission to occur and I don’t believe that in that situation there could possibly enough virus transferred IF he had herpes and IF he was shedding virus at that exact moment. Hard to know if the sanitizer helped or not but it probably didn’t hurt and maybe have helped.

Terri

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Thank you getting back to me so quickly Terri. Your response really helped. A relative risk question: Would you say what I did was on the order of risk of female to male transmission through intercourse with a condom, or maybe less? By your verbiage stating you don’t believe there could be enough of the virus transferred, I am guessing you think the risk might be less even if he was shedding, although I’m sure you can’t really put a number on it.

I was thinking of getting tested at 3 months and then again at 5 months. Does that seem reasonable, or do think I even need to get tested?

I read on one of the posts that the scrotum is not susceptible to receiving the virus because of the skin thickness, but if the male is infected, does the virus shed from the scrotum? Thanks for answering my questions.

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I think I have a better understanding of the statistical risks. Even assuming a 10% risk per year scenario – exposure 2x/wk or 100x/yr (up to 10x my actual risk?), the chance of transmission on a single event during shedding would be 1% (10/10000 x 10% shed rate), 0.1% at any given time, and 0.025% for the general population. I would have initially felt better if I was in the low single digit percentage, but it looks like worst case risk would be 1% and is probably much less. Do you agree with this? I’m thinking that testing may not be a bad idea but not really necessary based on this one event.

It seems that the virus doesn’t really transmit very well given that the unprotected male to female rate averages only 8% per year. So is the reason for its prevalence just due to the sheer number of sexual encounters, there not being a cure, and the majority of those infected not knowing they’re infected? I’m sure people have contracted herpes on just one or even a handful of exposures, but it seems that would be rare. I assume there is variability in people’s likelihood for transmission and reception so an individual couple/event could have a risk factor significantly different than the average.

Assuming this is correct, I feel much better about the situation, although I would have preferred to have never put myself in this position. Thank you for having this forum!

By the way ‘male go male’ was supposed to be ‘male to male’.

[Terri Warren]

Your risk is not even in the same ball park as male-female or female-male transmission. As I said before I think your risk is so small that you can put aside this worry. Have you ever been tested for herpes before to know if you were infected prior to this encounter or not?

Terri

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