My boyfriend just told me he has Herpes, what do I do now?
With Reid Mihalko from http://www.ReidAboutSex.com and Cathy Vartuli with http://www.TheIntimacyDojo.com.
Cathy: Someone wrote in and said hey Reid I really hope you get the chance to read this reply. I just found out my boyfriend had herpes he had it like 10 years. We’ve been together about 6 months having unprotected sex and in the 6 months this is the first time he said he had an outbreak that’s why he’s telling me about it now. I just saw your video on YouTube thanks for that it really helped get rid of the big stigma around it. It’s not as scary as I thought. It gave me a lot of perspective. I feel confused and overwhelmed but I still I continue my relationship and I am more worried about my mental health because of the conflicts around us. Thanks for the help that you can give. This is Reid Mihalko form http://www.ReidAboutSex.com
Reid: And Cathy Vartuli from http://www.TheIntimacyDojo.com. There is great- Adriel runs in website called age opportunity, herpes opportunity. Google it. We’ll try to put the link below. The big thing is the more you learn, generally speaking you might start to freak out and going to get overwhelmed but the more you start to learn about herpes and we have several videos on herpes, the more you hopefully realize, oh okay. Now that I know, now that I am making the unknown known, here’s what we’re dealing with and then a place to start to get information accurate medically, accurate information coz there’s a lot of shame and misinformation out there. And then always start with what I need physically safe, what do I need to feel emotionally safe always understand that it also happening to your partners as well and that you guys may have different needs around those things. And then just take baby steps to start mapping out on what do you need.
Cathy: One thing I want to lookout too there’s, he didn’t tell you he knew about it, did you have safer sex elevator speech www.ReidAboutSex.com/elevator A lot of us don’t, a lot of society doesn’t we kind of a drift in to it. I’m sure there fine they could have said something we all assume. It is so powerful to have that if he had it there’s some clean up to do there and you can get to decide whether you can trust him or not going forward because it’s a boundary violation to not if you ask if you have a conversation and he never not told you, he should really have told you before you had set unprotected sex. Gary Chapman and Jennifer something why I always forget her name I am sorry Jennifer. When sorry is not enough, is the book to find. It has five languages of apology going through that might be important for you to kind of see if you want to clean it up or move on if he’s lied to you in a way that it bothered you that much.
Reid: We don’t know if they lied. They just didn’t share.
Cathy: He had it for 10 years, we don’t know if he lied or not.
Reid: They’ve been dating for 6 months, they have unprotected sex and
Cathy: And he never told her.
Reid: We don’t know if they had a safer sex conversation.
Cathy: No, I’m not saying they should break up, if it something they should consider and maybe go see your doctor and get tested. It takes a little bit to show up in the blood system so you may have to, I think it’s a month.
Reid: It 2 weeks generally but then a month, 2 weeks to the first outbreak- ish and for the anti-body to show up I think it maybe a month.
Cathy: And for the meantime you can have unprotected sex if depending where his outbreak is and if that would help.
Reid: The good news is herpes is not fatal, there’s a lot of stigma attached to it. Some people can have really painful outbreaks frequently, most people tend to have 3-4 outbreaks and then they kind of fade of, they show up every once in a while not everybody gets really frequent outbreaks, not everybody gets painful outbreaks for those who gets frequent and or painful, you know you do the short straw on the herpes you know haystack and that just sucks. And you can use retro virals and things like that [inaudible 00:04:23] why not to try to suppress the outbreaks which can help for some people. Do some other research, try some things, talk to your doctors, and understand they may not be experts that’s why age opportunity is a great website coz there some geeks over there to kind of stuff and they really do not practice not shaming, not stigmatizing and the tricky part is you know when your partner that you have been unprotected sex with partners, you can risk being exposed just because the nature of skin to skin contact and how herpes gets transmitted and that condoms and what not don’t cover everything.
Cathy: We hope this helps and we are sorry that you’re struggling with this. Know that you can get through this and you’ll be okay.
Reid: Thank you so much for writing in and thank you all of you who continue to write in and give us a reason to shoot more videos. We appreciate it.
Cathy: That’s really fun.