What to Do If You Give Your Partner Herpes?
When we’re first diagnosed, right, you’re in pain physically. You’re in pain emotionally, everything hurts like your hair hurts as everything hurts, And you’re thinking to yourself, I am never going to have romantic life again. I will never give Herpes to anybody because I don’t want them to be in the same position I was in.
I will never put somebody in that position. Well, here’s the deal you are going to have romantic life again. You will get out of another relationship and move forward in life. It’s natural to trust me; of course, you will do everything possible to prevent transmission to your partner. Still, it happens because this virus is out there, and it is as common as it is right. It’s contagious. In my opinion, the truth always comes out and disclosing is just the way. Your partner needs to know that you have Herpes, okay so moving forward, what to do when your partner gets the phone call from your girlfriend or boyfriend or husband or wife or whoever it is that says I got Herpes and from you, so I want to break it into two categories.
One category is that you didn’t disclose. One category is you did disclose, so Let’s talk about you disclosing that you have Herpes and your Partner knew, so one of the things I want you to be very aware of is you can’t take the blame. It’s not your fault, right, like you’ve got to let it go. You told your partner that you have Herpes and that your partner made their own decision to move forward knowing the risk. It’s so easy to Take on that shame I did this to you, no. You did not do this to somebody, and your partner made this decision, so you’ve got to let go of that. You’ve got to take away from that knowing that you disclosed and he did the right thing. So the person made that decision.
The Second thing to remember if You have Disclosed Your Herpes Status it was this person’s decision, right? So not only can you not take on the guilt, but they made this decision on their own they are a responsible adult. So they decided they knew the pros, cons, risks, non-risks, whatever, so they made this decision. So if you’ve disclosed to your partner that you have Herpes and they get Herpes, know that you can be there for them, you can support them in other ways but know that it was their decision now moving on to if you didn’t disclose right. I know that this happens. I know that you have started dating. You’re like should I tell him. should I not tell him? When should I tell him? Then oops, accident, you sleep together, then you sleep together again, then it’s you’ve been dating for two months, then you’ve been dating With Herpes for a year, then you get married. Whatever like this does happen, and I understand. The thing with Herpes is you are always contagious because of this thing called viral shedding and potential outbreaks.
So if your partner comes to you and is like yeah, I got Herpes from you, come clean, right tell the truth what you’re right I did tell the truth as I said earlier, the truth always comes out and in my opinion, just owning it telling the truth is going to be the best thing I don’t know what the future of your relationship is but telling the truth when it presents when It’s presented to you is going to be so much better for you moving forward of course and course for the relationship.
What I want you to do when the person comes to you and tells you is I want you to explain why you didn’t tell them, so again you’re going to own up to it but explain why like and get tell the truth right I know that there’s a good reason Like never a good way to tell someone you have Herpes. It’s awkward, but explain to them and tell them, like, hey, this is what happened. I’ve been living with this guilt, or gosh, I didn’t know what to do, or honestly, I didn’t think you’d get it. My doctor told me I was only contagious when I had outbreaks and never had outbreaks with you. Your story is telling them like explain why and then what’s important is apologizing is hard for us to do as humans.
We don’t want to admit that we’re wrong because we’re always right, obviously, but no, admitting that you were wrong, especially to somebody you care about, is really important and just apologizing and saying, Gosh, I put you in this position. I’m sorry, and a heartfelt apology can go a long way. It doesn’t get rid of Herpes by any means but can help with the soothing. It can help the other person understand that they have Herpes okay. Then there is kind of a third category, which does happen when the person didn’t know they had Herpes. They give their partner herpes now for those of us, myself included, who have had horrible first outbreaks that are in so much pain and you know can’t sit down and you’re like how did you not know you have Herpes? Are you kidding me? Well, there is the majority? The majority of people are asymptomatic, meaning they don’t have symptoms. I guess we’re the lucky ones that have symptoms, and then eighty percent of the people with herpes hsv2 don’t know they have it. Hence, it is out there that people don’t know they have Herpes for whatever reason. Why didn’t they get tested for it? They don’t have outbreaks.
Whatever their reason is, I don’t know. Still, it does happen a lot I hear in our communities people saying, like, hey, my boyfriend, my girlfriend had Herpes had no idea and gave it to me. So in that situation, too, the best thing you can do is tell the truth, apologize, be there for them, and now you both know you have Herpes.
