Question:
I am a young male. 4 days ago I had protected sex (first time I've had sex in several months). For the past couple of days, I have been feeling signs of prodrome (flu-like fever, tired...tingling on my genitals.)

I prayed to god for it to be something curable but as I write this tonight, my worst fears are confirmed. The blisters are beggining to appear in the spots where I feel the tingling. I have Herpes. One night of 15 minutes of pleasure has now changed my life until the day I die.

I have no idea the obstacles which now lay ahead of me. What will happen with the new exciting relationship I had just started? Do I tell my parents? Why can't I just redo this past week. Just one week.

I found myself looking at people over the past couple days, people on t.v., people on the streets, people at work. I wonder to myself if any of these people I am looking at are also infected with the disease. I wonder what their experiences are like. I want to be able to ask them for advice. But I can't. I'm alone on this one.

And that's the irony of it all. I had sex because I wanted to not feel alone. I was tired of being alone. And now, I am more alone than I could have ever imagined.


Life will go on, but not the same. I now have a deep dark secret. One that my friends I pray will never know of. One that I fear at my young age, will prevent me from courting other young people. How can I date people within my social circle without my rotten secret being exposed, to my friends, and to those I work with. It would always be in the back of their minds just as it will be in mine.

I pray for a cure. I pray for my life back.

Answer:
Hey there. This is my first post on this forum and I felt your topic was an excellent place to start. I have been reading the posts all over this forum for the past two days (since I saw the doc at planned parenthood and flipped my shiznit just like everyone else) and you have come to the right place. I'm not sure how long this site has been around but there are people I already feel I have come to know and appreciate who have encouraged me and I haven't even interacted yet (particularly Faith, Richard, and that cheerful pilot guy with the photos from lake Michigan =}

I'm 22. I'm bisexual. I have always practiced safe sex (though not always safe oral sex which is a huge issue when it comes to herpes and likely how I contracted it though I honestly have no idea and shall never know). Our generation, however, is just screwed in the face of todays STD epidemic and it's true when they say the only safe sex is no sex. I was never and could never be one of those abstinent people. Now, I feel my life is over. I was even so dramatic as to say so to the three men I had to inform of their possible exposure. This very likely did not help matters, but then again, I'm still pretty shaken by all this and just within the last few hours have gotton up the courage to post...thinking rationally may take some time.

However, I DID tell the people I needed to and this is something I haven't heard many peple discuss here. Everyone talks about telling people you are potentially going to have sex with or begin relationships with...but what about the people you may have endangered before you knew you had it? Maybe everyone is just more chaste than I was or something but I don't think so.... Let me explain:

I first noticed something wrong last November and immediatly set up an appointment at the public health clinic near where I was living at the time in Northern California (I have been tested for STD's 4 times this year alone as I have always been hyper-paranoid about this stuff and careful etc etc...and...I had a lot of sex). The doc took a culture and I was eventually 100% misdiagnosed. From what I have read this is very very common. The outbreak was so darn mild that she had me convinced it was an ingrown hair and I slept with a few folks between then and now. A few days ago it came back in the same spot and more obviously something very unwelcome. I had moved back to the Northeast since then and went to a planned parenthood where they took a blood sample and the doc told me.."yep, that's herpes". To be an honest and responsible human being I had to call those casual sex encounters up one by one and tell them they all had to be concerned of possible exposure. It really sucked to have to explain that condoms may not have done the trick.

Now, my casual sex life is over. It did not matter how safe I was it got me in the end and I suppose when, as a woman, you increase your risk by 5% with every person you sleep with I should have gotton this a long time ago. I have only had one long term relationship in my life and I now feel as if the next person I touch is going to have to be the person I marry.

I hate this. I am not a trusting person. I do not look foward to playing the games this is going to require-- staving them off and making excuses, testing and looking for love, doing this stupid little dance until trust is gained... I was perfectly happy being "alone" before and telling people that "love never comes when you are looking for it" and now...well, now I feel so freaking alone that it's like the only thing I can do it look and fear and hope and fear and wait and look and worry and cry. And I don't want to. I want to be able to focus on having a rel life of my own. I just graduated from college last May. I have a degree from a good school with a good reputation in my field. I can be using these things and building myself up and having other passions besides the sexual beings around me... I know all this...but I can't do it yet. I'm still incapacitated by having my whole world taken and fouled up like finding your sweet, innocent, golden retriever crushed under the wheels of a semi.

I'm sorry to be so dramatic, but I think we can all relate and I apologize for needing the venting space too. I suppose that's what this pl;ace is for.

So, worried890, I fear I have not been as helpful as I set out to be in reposnding to your post, but instead went off about myself. At least I hope you know people relate and feel just as aweful as you do. I hope some of those inspiring and wonderful people who post in hear come pick up this thread and tell us both how alright it's going to be and counteract some of my negativity, which, again, I'm sorry about. Actually, it's kind of funny... I went crazy this morning looking for the number of the one friend I have who I know has herpes, a friend I just graduated with, and when I finally found it and called her (she had gone through excruciating pain and sickness and the person who gave it to her denied it for a year before fessing up) and told her what was up hew first response was: "Oh, it isn't that bad!" She swears by b-propolis (sp?) which I still know little or nothing about 'cept that we steal it from bees.

Blah. I babble. To anyone who reads and responds...Thank you so much. This is quite a site.

Answer:
And that's the irony of it all. I had sex because I wanted to not feel alone. I was tired of being alone. And now, I am more alone than I could have ever imagined. You are the only person who can fix feeling 'alone'.

Noone else can make you feel un-alone...

In fact, the most lonely I EVER felt was when I was IN a relationship. If the relationship is not honest, and open, and conforting, and communicative... Its a LONELY place. When you don't have a CONNECTION with people... both friends and love partners... You are alone...

You can't find love with sex.... But if you find love first, great sex comes with it. (yes, EVEN if you have HSV)

The only way to NOT feel alone is to expose yourself to others... The only way to expose yourself to others is to be honest. ANYTHING less then honesty you are putting up a front... an image.... a shield.... a fence...

How can you make connections with people when you are interacting from behind a fence?????

I now have a deep dark secret. One that my friends I pray will never know of. When you reach a point that you don't care if your friends know... You are on your way to being 'better'.

This is not about a disease... Its about how you feel about yourself...

Life will go on, but not the same. Life will go on.... The question is, will you overcome HSV? Or will you let HSV overcome you?

I pray for a cure. I pray for my life back. You have 2 choices...

You can put your life on hold and pray for a cure, which will return you to your naive superficially 'happy place' that you were before you got HSV.

OR

You can learn more about yourself... learn more about love... and immerse yourself more deeply in life then you did pre-HSV. You can learn what life is really about, learn what happiness is REALLy about, and you can find love and happiness that you MAY have never found if not for having HSV which makes it NECCESARY to find true happiness...

People without HSV or other major issues in life can live under a quixotic search for happiness. You can fool yourself into thinking that happiness is found by gaining or seeking the closest things to perfect in as many areas of your life as you can. As good of a job as you can... as good of a car as you can afford... as beautiful of a wife as you can find... etc etc etc.

When you get HSV it throws you SO far off track in your quest to be everything that you think you need to be, to be happy, and to be wanted and to be loved.... That you think you'll never get where you want with HSV.

The best part about that if you have faith, and hope and love (FHL) you will look for a way to find happiness... and in your search, the only conclusion that you will find, that will FIT is that happiness comes from love... Pure and simple.... If you were SURROUNDED by love... How happy would you be???

How AWESOME is it to be loved? How great does it feel to be near a person who is happy, honest, pleasant, caring, interested in you...

A person who listens... understands... comforts... shares.... HOW much do you enjoy being around people like that?

And now WHAT about have HSV prevents you from being ANY of those things?

....not a DAMN thing

You can be ALL of those things... You can be MORE of those things then people who DON'T have HSV because YOU know... Because YOU KNOW the only thing that matters... YOU KNOW that love is the only thing that works. The only thing that matters...

And guess what... Love is the ONLY thing that you have an unlimited supply of. You can love 500 people and still have the ability to love 1 more person with as much care, compassion, and heart as all the rest, without taking away from your ability to love all the rest.

It takes practice, and self-evaluation to learn to love other people... And of course, you have to start with loving yourself. I'll throw in one of my favorite quotes again:

You are the love you seek.
You are the companionship you desire.
You are your own completion.
You are your best friend, you confidante.
"You are, the one that you are looking for."
You are the only who can do what you are looking for someone else to do

The hardest thing to do is to learn to love yourself... Love isn't taking, its giving... and unless you can give love... you have nothing to offer... When you learn to love yourself you become love... Love just eminates from you, and as love draws to love, love will be drawn to you... I know that's a tad abstract, but its true...

Once you learn to love yourself (which is the hard part) loving other people becomes REALLY easy... So after you learn to love yourself (which you can do NOW) work on your relationships with your FAMILY AND FRIENDS... Those are EASY places to develop loving relationships.. (depending on your family situation, it may not be but friends for sure are easy places to start)

Once you master having loving relationships with your friends... Then you are in a position to encounter a significant other who you can build a relationship with, and THEN after that, the great sex part comes...


This board is a great place... And you can come here, and talk about a lot of things, and learn about a lot of things, and share experiences with other people, and all that...

But when you boil it down, the only way this board makes a difference is if people read something, and it makes you think...

But make no mistake... YOU fix yourself at the moment of your choosing.... Don't you think its time?

fhl,

nik

Answer:
Hi worried 890 and ex-slut,

Forgive me for answering you both with this post.
By the way, what a name... "ex-slut"......... ?? LOL :lol:

Well... Even if I could go back to the past, and could redo what I did, .... I wouldn't change it. MC37 Pilot always says the same thing....
This may sound odd to you guys, but.... getting herpes (I have HSV-2) is one of the most wonderful thing that happened to me. Surely, it has changed my life. ........For better.
If I didn't have herpes, I would've missed sooooooo many great things in the world.

You guys are still young, if you can learn something very important now from this experience, herpes, you're gonna have a longer wonderful future! I guarantee it! I'm not even telling you that you should be a monk or nun. We all get horny, we need to enjoy intimacy.
What I'm saying is, you can do it also, but only in a balanced way. Believe me, you're gonna feel much better than before you got herpes.

Whatever we do, we have some kind of risk. When you drive, you may enter a car accident. When you go skiing, you may break your leg. Even... when you eat, you may choke and die. :-)
.... But you do it anyway. Because you need it, because you like it regardless of the risk, because you enjoy it more than you fear....
When you keep them well-balanced, you don't meet any problem. But once you lose the balance, that's the time you feel that you're in trouble.

Now think about sex. As long as you have sex with someone who you love and care for, as long as you do it for something very valuable, you wouldn't regret even if you get uncurable disease.

When we get freedom (any kind of freedom), we get risk at the same time. They are always balanced and they always exist together.
But when we seek excessive freedom, We need limiter to keep them balanced.

To people who try to take advantage of this freedom "sex", herpes is given as a limiter to keep them balanced.
To people who didn't try to take advantage of it (but still got it), herpes is given, because it doesn't affect on their balanced life at all.

It's that simple.
I always think that this is the real world here in this forum. We speak out true mind here, we all know huge sadness that can happen in every person's life, we are very sober, looking at people who are drunk with happiness and love which they don't know it's phony and fragile.

I don't know what other people feel. But I always wanted to know the truth. I didn't wanna be someone who thinks that she knows everything, while she doesn't know anything. Still...there are sooo many things in this world that I don't know about, and as long as I live, I wanna know them, learn, and grow. And the great part of this, is... the more I know the truth, the easier the life becomes for me to live.

This is a great chance to re-evaluate your life, and to find who you really are, and to find what the important thing is in your life......
Once you know that, life becomes easier and meaningful for you to live, and you WILL know that having herpes is not a bad luck at all. It's rather good luck.


About your question, ex-slut, ("about the people you may have endangered before you knew you had it?")
You didn't know that you had herpes when you slept with them......
You had no bad intention, you just didn't know.....
If you still have contact with those people, or if they are still your friends, .. mmm probably you should tell and explain. They may be mad, but it's not your fault that you didn't know. You tell them for them to take care of themselves.... When they had sex with you, a half of responsibility is on them for the result of the sex.


And about propolis
I've also heard that it's good for herpes.
But also, I've read an article of a doctor who has been studying herpes for a long time.... She said propolis many times gives you a drug rash. Besides, it may make your body allergic constitution.... sometimes they even use it in their experiments to make mice allergic reaction.
So... just be careful... be aware of the possibility of getting bad result by taking it. If it works for you, it must be for you. But if you get allergic reaction, you should stop it...


Please hang in.
How you react to this difficulty, how you live right now at this moment, is creating your future.
Your future can be great and wonderful.
It's all up to you.

Best wishes..

Faith

Answer:
oops, forgot to log-in, that was my post from above... damn, now I cant edit my spelling errors...

Oh well...

"love never comes when you are looking for it" No it doesn't....

Because you can't find love until you are love yourself...

And you won't recognize love until you have love yourself...

"Oh, it isn't that bad!" You'll say the same thing some day!

Answer:
oops, forgot to log-in, that was my post from above... damn, now I cant edit my spelling errors... The post before me. :D

Hey Nik, we were working on the same theme almost at the same time, huh? LOLOL

Faith

Answer:
thanks for the prompt responses you guys. soon I will no longer have regular (or private) access to a computer as I am moving again soon but thank goodness for you who do and use it to take the time in places like this. I hope to stay in contact with this forum and I'll certainly stick around for the next few days as I arrange travel plans. I was very tempted to curl up in a ball and die when I found out....stay in New England...be depressed and not move on with the plans I had. I don't want to do that anymopre, but I also don't know how to stop obsessing. I think too much anyway and now that I have something like this to think about?! Heh. Yeah. Anyway.

To Faith:

I know it is a helpful way to think about the condition, but I don't know about this whole "being given it for a reason" thing. That's the same as those helpless seekers who are convinced that there is a "meaning" to life. Life just happened upon this planet when some ammino acids linked up in the right way and then evolution began. It was...well..an accident. And a very very lucky one. Human beings are the ones that place value on things and give them names and meanings. (the concept of "luck" alone is a human invention due to our relationship and understanding of probability...also a concept WE made up) The world is just a place we live in and herpes is just a thing we have. Human beings are the reason it is stigmatized and people hate each other over petty things. Everything we think and feel is created from within ourselves and how we react and live in our society. I am NOT being hopeless or negative when I say there is no meaning to life. I am pointing out that WE create the meaning ourselves. If it helps for me to tell myself I needed limitations and that's why I got herpes...I will. But, if that just succeeds in making me feel like a dirty person who "asked for it" despite years of teaching other people about safe sex and being a careful person...I won't. What gets me through, I guess, is the scientific approach of "well, things happen, viruses multiply, and we do what we can to make it better" OF COURSE this can make us stronger... WE give new meaning to life, right? We are human beings with the amazing capability to imagine and invent and love.

I personally do not believe in any power higher than our own social psychology and the forces of time and tide. The ways those things interact...well...I suppose that's where people come up with religion...call it what you will if it does you good I'm for it!

Answer:
I know it is a helpful way to think about the condition, but I don't know about this whole "being given it for a reason" thing. That's the same as those helpless seekers who are convinced that there is a "meaning" to life. If you use the theory for you lean on, yes you are one of those helpless seeker. :D

Life just happened upon this planet when some ammino acids linked up in the right way and then evolution began. It was...well..an accident. And a very very lucky one. Human beings are the ones that place value on things and give them names and meanings. (the concept of "luck" alone is a human invention due to our relationship and understanding of probability...also a concept WE made up) The world is just a place we live in and herpes is just a thing we have. Human beings are the reason it is stigmatized and people hate each other over petty things. Everything we think and feel is created from within ourselves and how we react and live in our society. I am NOT being hopeless or negative when I say there is no meaning to life. I am pointing out that WE create the meaning ourselves. I totally agree.
"WE" are the ones who put the meaning to things that happen to us.

Being give it for a reason... doesn't have to be religious thing.
( In fact, I'm not religious at all. )
It's just a different point of view of what you just said.

Well... I actually don't know what to say... cuz I agree with you... all things you said, and still persist on all I said. :D

It's only the matter of choice of words, it's only the matter of from which side you look at a fact (or thuth)...

And... I basically think that when it comes to very spiritual part of ourselves.... if you believe in some kind of religion or if you don't believe in any kind of religion, or if you are atheist,... really doesn't matter..

Just knowing who you are using everything you know, everything that happens to you... that's what we are doing. How we do it... is just a means..

Faith

Answer:
yep! language is the compromise we make to understand each other and since it is a compromise it make take us a few tries to understand each other or in this case realize that we are talking about the same things! =}

Thank you so much for your thoughtful responses. I am glad to be amongst people who have learned not to shun or scoff at anyone for their personal aspirations, faiths, lives, loves... If it takes something like herpes for some folks to get to that place.... maybe there's the "reason"

=}