Newbies and Herpes Question

[872016 29]

My significant other and I began playing last May and have played about a dozen times. We did a lot of verbal Covid screening and we're all good there.

 

We did our first STD checkups since starting, and she turned up positive for HSV-2. I turned up negative for everything.

 

I consider this as no big deal. She has never had a breakout, and our theory is that she got it from a vanilla dating partner prior to us getting together a bit over a year ago. Her previous screening to this was done before her last partner before we began dating.

 

Long story short, she is super sad because she thinks she is ruined/tainted and that no one will want to play with her again. We are so new that we don't know the answer to that.

 

I work with numbers for a living, and my guesstimate is that in any given club or house party, up to half the people there will have it. Yet no one walks around disclosing their HSV-2 status.

 

We use protection for penetration, but oral has always been "open season" so the risk of HSV-2 transmission is there. And condoms only protect female-to-male transmission about 65%.

 

From my readings, unprotected sex if there's no breakout has a 3-4% chance of transmission. Taking Valtrex daily drops that to 1-2%. Nothing can be done to take this risk totally down to 0%.

 

Seems that due to regular testing by most in the LS, there is some acceptance of risk. Any advice or observations from experienced folk is appreciated!

[adamgunn 1,460]

Tell your sweetie not to worry.

 

I'm sure I've played with many a person who's had it. A few have told me they had it before we played, I appreciated it and when they added that they were not having a breakout. I took my chances with them.

 

I imagine I've played with some who didn't disclose it, although they knew they had it and just ignored it, and probably a few who didn't know they have it.

 

Just watch out for breakouts, and don't play during those times.

[njbm 2,871]

I think that HSV and HPV are commonly transmitted, even with condoms. HPV does have a vaccine intended for younger people. Both viruses are so common in the populace that one must presume that they are spread in swinging. A well known risk, not much discussed. 

[cplnuswing 4,713]

I know it's hard when something like this gets sprung on you, but she shouldn't worry or feel that way about herself.

 

adamgunn's outlook on it is pretty much ours.  Relative to other STIs it's common even though most don't even know they "have" it, it's not typically included in a STI screen so people who say "I've been tested and I'm clean" may or may not be when it comes to herpes, the whole HSV-1 and HSV-2 confusion, and so on. 

 

I distinctly remember battling some herpes sores...I was like 9, and the more commonly used, and less scary, terminology there would be "cold sores" but really HSV-1.  I don't feel the need to disclose that to anyone, even though if I was tested for it, I'm assuming it would be a positive.  If I had a cold sore on my mouth, I wouldn't be playing with anyone, and if I had a sore on my genitals, I wouldn't be playing with anyone.  Beyond that, I think that is really all you can ask of people since for the vast majority, the truth is they honestly don't know one way or another.

 

Other than doing some pre-play visual inspection to make sure no outbreak is going on, there's just really not a lot you can do.  Condoms do offer some protection, but it's not complete.  So, it's just one of those things where just about activity in life carries some risk, and you just have to decide for yourself where your risk tolerance line is at.

 

Starting to veer away from fact toward more opinion here, but I think the whole herpes thing is waaaaaay overblown, and just another example of sex-shaming by a culture that has a love-hate relationship with all things sexual, especially when there is money to be made off of it.  A lot of things that we think are freak-out worthy, we have been taught we should be freaked out about, well beyond the level of what it really deserves.  You may find this article interesting reading.  How Herpes Became a Sexual Boogeyman

 

There are also several good older in-depth discussions on this topic here on the site.  Threads discussing Herpes

 

Sending best wishes that this all will soon be just a bad memory.

[872016 29]

16 hours ago, cplnuswing said:

Starting to veer away from fact toward more opinion here, but I think the whole herpes thing is waaaaaay overblown, and just another example of sex-shaming by a culture that has a love-hate relationship with all things sexual, especially when there is money to be made off of it.

I think your opinion is spot on!

[Sunday 119]

Playing basketball or any one of the many other sports where skin-to-skin contact occurs - kissing/hugging people at gatherings - things like that carry about the same risk and no one ever thinks twice about it.

 

I don't know anyone that ever caught a disease from swinging.