Thanks for your kind insights and sharing of personal information. You are a special person....so cool

I'm interested to know when you think it's the best time to tell someone about the infection: how far would you go (in terms of sexual contact) before telling?

Before or after: Kissing? Cuddling with clothes on? etc, etc...

if clothes are coming off then it's time to talk about your herpes, std's and such. As long as the clothes are on, your genital herpes isn't an issue.

betsy

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ASHA Moderator

Hi betsy,

Thanks for all your kind words, again.

Have been thinking a lot of the whole GH thing and I think, for me anyway, checking out information on the internet tends to make me feel worse, even the so-called reputable sites. What I mean by this, more specifically, is I'm finding that people WITH GH are their own worst enemies and, in fact, do more damage to their own emotional health through the posting of self-hating, demoralizing, denigrating posts about how catastrophic having the condition is, etc----I, too, have been guilty of this, sadly. I thank you for confronting the attitudes of people with GH and effectively demystifying what, quite honesty, is a minor skin condition. Nevertheless, hearing other people with a minor skin irritation beat up on themselves does tend to affect how I feel about myself.

I'm now starting to go through days without thinking about it and hope to, in fact, have a whole month without thinking about it. Maybe even a year!!!!!

Have another question for you: do you think a person with oral HSV 1 has an obligation to tell a future kissing/oral sex partner about their infection? do you consider this obligation in the same league informed consent around GH2? Just curious given the fact that both conditions are in the herpes family and both can be transmitted sexually. This said, I understand the HSV 1 is not primarily a sexually acquired infection but research has shown that it can, in fact, be transmitted this way. I believe that 30% of GH is type 1, passed on through oral sex...why does the "talk" solely center around type 2? It might do far more in the way of "destigimatizing" the infection (GH2) if both types were talked about in the context of a relationship....that will definitely be my approach to the "talk"....discussing both virus types, how they are contracted, risks, etc...

Thanks