How I Navigate Dating With Herpes

Ray Orr is an editorial design manager. For PS’s Radical Honesty issue, she opens up about what it’s like to date with herpes. Read more radically honest stories here.

I was dating someone casually in my mid-20s when I ended up contracting herpes. I had slept with them unprotected, with no condom. Everybody’s experience is different — sometimes herpes can lie dormant for years. But for me, it was immediate. Two weeks later, in the exact location of the unprotected sex, I got a terrible outbreak. I started Googling and I just knew in my gut that it was herpes.

I went to urgent care and the test came back positive for HSV-2. It felt like a gut punch, like my world was over. I knew it was something I would have to live with forever. So on top of the initial contraction, which was extremely painful, my sense of safety was completely shattered. It was a wake-up call for me in the way that I was living my life and not having honest conversations with people before sleeping with them.

At the time, I knew absolutely nothing about it, and I wouldn’t know anyone else who had it for years. I slowly started to meet a couple people here and there, but not nearly the number of people I thought I would, because it is so common. Then, when I was working at The Lily, I mentioned to my editor Neema that I wanted to write about my experience, and I was really supported. It was nerve-racking and felt like a coming out of sorts. But in telling everyone at one time in this way, I gained complete control of my story. It felt like I was reclaiming my story and my experience, and getting rid of the shame.

Dating with herpes was definitely a process. When I shared my story, it had been so long that I had gotten it under control physically. I had started dating again and I was tired of all the emotional labor of bringing it up in sexual and dating situations. There was a lot of relief for me in sharing it openly.

Then I was in two back-to-back long-term relationships, so I wasn’t dating for about six years. But once I got out of that last relationship and started dating again, I had come out as queer and had never dated on apps before. I was like, “How am I going to approach this?” I was skeptical. Would I be able to have a normal sex life or dating life? Would this make it much more difficult? Is this another thing somebody could reject me for?

So when I first started dating apps, I did not put it on my profiles. I played the game of trying to get to know somebody and figuring out when to bring it up. For a long time, I would only bring it up in person because I felt like I had the most control over how it was being conveyed to them. But people have varying degrees of knowledge about sexual health, and I started to realize how much emotional labor I was having to do to educate other people. And then when I would get rejected, it got tiring and it started to feel shitty for that to be a reason.

So I started experimenting with different ways of telling people, whether that was over text or a voice note, and giving people time or gauging what their knowledge of it is. I started exploring putting it on my dating profile. On Feeld, a very sex-positive app, I wrote “HSV positive” and “Honest and brave conversations about sexual health are a priority to me.” Because it’s not just about somebody accepting it. I wanted to know: Are you willing to have these conversations? Are you knowledgeable about your own sexual health and behaviors, and the people you’re engaging with sexually?

Now, I’m open about it on dating apps. It’s a conversation starter. And if somebody has a problem with it, then I’m like, don’t swipe on me.

If you take away anything from me talking about this, it’s that one, this is a thing that exists, is very common, and is not a big deal. And two, that everybody should just be talking about sexual health.

I remember when I first wrote the story about it, people were like, “You’re so brave for sharing.” I wish this wasn’t a brave thing. In order for it not to be, and to be more normalized and less stigmatized, more people have to talk about it. If I can have any part in someone else’s journey to make the experience feel less traumatizing or less isolating, then I would tell my story wherever.

When it comes down to it, if you are a human being who is having sex, you are at risk for a number of things. Everybody has their own relationship with risk and what it means for themselves and their health. We need to talk openly and honestly about our facts, so people can make the best decision based on themselves in their own body.

Let’s all be adults and talk about it. Then it’s a lot more fun because you don’t have to worry, overthink, project, or assume things about people. We can all have a much more fruitful and expansive sex life and dating life by being honest and transparent about where we’re at.

Yerin Kim is the features editor at POPSUGAR, where she helps shape the vision for special features and packages across the network. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, she has over five years of experience in the pop culture and women’s lifestyle spaces. She’s passionate about spreading cultural sensitivity through the lenses of lifestyle, entertainment, and style.