My hubby and I recently found out that he is HSV2 + and HSV1 -. I am HSV1 + and HSV2 -. We have been married 10 years and do not use protection. He recently told me he thought I gave him something 10 years ago because he noticed a small blister on his penis the night after we had sex for the first time. He didn't know what it was - he was a bit worried and didn't want to talk about it - it healed in 2-3 days and he forgot about it. He said this would repeat in the same way about once a year or so. He decided to finally tell me because he had about 3 ob in the last few months and it scared him. I was shocked because I have had no ob that i have ever known and these issues never occured to me due to being in a faithful marriage of 10 years and having no history of std's. OK- so we had the igg type specific blood work (his blisters were in too late of stage for culture) and those are the results. I am wondering how on earth I have not contracted the HSV2 from him after all these years of unprotected sex with him - especially when he says whenever he did break out it was a day or two after intercourse with me! Wouldn't he be so contagious? I would expect he would either be gHSV1 or we would both have HSV2. I have never had a cold sore that I know of - and I have performed oral sex on him countless times all these years.

Can you shed some light on this? Obviously we are committed to each other, etc. but because I know these things now (since a week and half ago) I am fearful of contracting HSV2 - I do not want genital ob obviously. He thinks we have been doing this for 10 years, why change now besides avoiding when he's having an ob. Were we just lucky all these years? The NP said I should retest in 2-3 months. Could the tests be wrong? Thank you for any input you have.

so in case you are wondering i think these are our results:

Me - HSV1 >5.00 HSV2 0.10

Him - HSV1 0.09 HSV2 >5.00

Only symptoms we are aware of are his genital ob. I have had "staph" infections in my nostril/nasal area every LONG once in a while since I was a young girl - but now I'm rethinking that - I'm wondering if they've been hsv1 ob all this time. interesting...

It's not surprising that you are hsv1+ - the majority of adults are whether they can recall getting obvious cold sores or not. If you really are curious the next time your nose issue reoccurs you can get it cultured within 48 hours of it's appearance to see if it's really a bacterial issue or oral herpes that was wrongly diagnosed all those years ago. That's totally up to you.

So yes since you are hsv2 negative and your husband is hsv2+ then he had it before he met you and just never realized it. It's actually a quite common scenerio. So why didn't you manage to contract it over all these years together? It's as much about luck as anything - you just were never in the right place at the wrong time when your body's defenses were low enough for you to contract the virus. So what do you do now? Well that's totally up to the 2 of you. If you are done having children then if you'd contract hsv2 from your husband - it would just be a nuisance for the most part. Obviously just avoiding sex whenever he has genital issues has been going pretty well for the two of you so if you both want to continue on that way - no reason not to. If you know that now that you know that he has hsv2 you are going to be thinking about it and would just like some extra added precautions for awhile until you better adjust to the idea of this virus has been a part of your relationship for 10 years then ask him if he'd be willing to go on daily suppressive therapy to help lower your risk even more. Same with if you aren't done having your family yet - consider his starting daily suppressive therapy just because if you don't have to deal with herpes during pregnancy/delivery - even better. It's totally up to the two of you. Also if for whatever reason ( most times there isn't one you can pin down ) if he is starting to have ob's more often - suppressive therapy would help keep those down to a minimum for him too so that he feels more comfortable more often and there's less times you have to try to avoid sex.

Feel free to ask any questions you have I'm sure I"ll get totally caught up here within the next couple of days!

betsy

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