Uncertainty and morality

[Thanksterri1]

Hi Terri

My ex girlfriend had hsv1 oral and once performed oral sex on me during an outbreak (before I knew about all of this)

I never got any symptoms of anything so kept going with my life. However, when we broke up I went travelling, and developed a small red area on my genitals. It was painless and mild, but it was there.

I started googling around and discovered that hsv1 can transmit to the genitals so I went to the doctor and they told me that the rash was not at all symptomatic of herpes. It had been around for too long, upward of 2 months, and had no blisters or pain. So they said they couldn’t swab it to confirm. They gave me steroid cream and the rash reacted well, so I’m inclined to trust the negative diagnosis. The rash has only just cleared after 3 months.

However, I learnt that many ghsv1 cases are asymptomatic. I don’t want to get a blood test because they are expensive, inaccurate and likely to be positive (just statisticaly) but don’t tell me if I have ghsv1 or am just an average joe with asymptomatic ohsv1.

My question is this: considering that there’s a good chance that I already had asymptomatic ohsv1 from childhood and had antibody protection, or just got lucky and didn’t catch ghsv1 that night, as well as the low risk of transmission genital to genital from asymptomatic ghsv1, do you think I can continue to live a normal sex life? Do you feel there’s a need to disclose about this event to future partners? I feel like the very mention of herpes may scare partners away, even though I don’t necessarily have it, and even if I do the risk of transmission is so tiny.

I just feel stuck i guess, I wish there was a way to know the location of hsv1.

Thank you.

[Terri Warren]

I think you can continue to lead a normal life. Your situation is way more typical than you might think – probably lots and lots of people are in the same situation. The only way to know the location of an HSV 1 infection is to have an outbreak somewhere, and since HSV 1 genital infection rarely recurs, that’s probably not going to happen very often, if at all, if you have genital infection. If you do have an oral infection from childhood, you are very likely NOT to have picked up a genital infection at all.

Terri

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