And that's ok. It's estimated that upwards of 50-80% of the population in North America has either Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV) 1 or 2. There's such a stigma surrounding herpes, and most STDs really, that the subject matter is rarely discussed openly and honestly. Because of this, many of us have become grossly misinformed when it comes to best practices regarding our sexual health. In college I was part of an HIV and STD peer to peer prevention program, and up until a few weeks ago, thought I was well versed on the subject matter. As it turns out, I came across a pretty startling fact about HSV 1 and 2: transmission can occur from an infected partner who does not have a visible sore and may not know that he is infected. This was news to me, which made me wonder why more people don't know this crucial piece of information about the virus. "Both viral types [genital and oral] are easily transmitted to their site of preference, and can also be spread to other sites. Both are mostly contagious during active outbreaks, but are often spread through viral shedding when there are no recognizable symptoms." Shedding. I didn't even know what that was. But basically it's the thing trying to scare me back into being a big old prude, because there's no way to know when shedding occurs. So where does this leave us?
I started dating a very sexy someone recently and he revealed to me that he had genital herpes, most commonly cause by HSV2. Having just gotten a clean bill of health from my doctor on the STD front, I had a lot of questions to ask. Mainly, how can we...
