Tag: herpes

Why I Don’t Say I Have Herpes On My Dating Profile

When I talk about my difficulties in dating one of the things I mention is having herpes. People have asked me why I don’t say I have herpes on my dating profile. This is an excellent question and whether to list a positive status is something that those with herpes often ponder. After all, if I eliminate the people who aren’t okay with this fact up front then my chances of finding a match should be better.

Everyone is going to have their own approach but here is why I do not state that I have herpes on my dating profile and why it works for me.

The first reason is that of all the things I want people to evaluate me by it’s not that I have herpes. Obviously, I’m not shy or I wouldn’t be talking about it now. Still, I want someone to know my qualities first and not the fact that I have a virus.

I believe there are good people who would rule me out if they read about herpes in my profile. I get it, herpes can be a complication that some may just simply choose to avoid entirely. So when they see it in a profile they think “well that person is a good fit but I don’t know what to do with that whole herpes thing so I’ll pass.” If I don’t list having herpes then I can disclose after a couple of dates. In essence, I’m banking on my personality and I feel much better with those odds. Now the same person may think “this is a really nice guy and we do seem to click so I’ll give him a chance.”

One of the things people ask is, “wouldn’t listing your herpes status connect you to other folks with herpes?” I think the answer to that is yes, and while I will gladly date folks with herpes, it brings me to my second reason which was a bit of an unexpected discovery for me.

I don’t want to attract extremely broken people. If that sounds harsh it probably is but here’s my reasoning. I recently joined four private Facebook groups for people with herpes. I was hoping that I might find some sort of kinship there. Instead, what I found were a bunch of sad sacks with a serious case of the poor me’s. I couldn’t handle all the negativity from these people who obviously felt like herpes made them irreparably damaged. Their anger and lack of self-worth spilled over into every conversation and what should have been simple posts became arguments and just another chance to put someone down.

Now I get it, herpes isn’t something most people choose but here we are so let’s just rock it. People generally spend so much time comparing themselves to others that they never take the time to figure out who they are. They think they have established a sense of self, but they’re far from it.

Humans have played this mental game with themselves for thousands of years and it goes something like this; these people are X and X is wrong/bad. Since I’m Y, I’m not an X, and therefore I’m right/good. If it’s not obvious the problem with this is that if someone only ever determines their worth as a product of how they deem someone else then it doesn’t take much to topple that house of cards. It’s not real self worth.

For example, if Jane thinks Ben is a dirty person because he has herpes then what will Jane think about herself when she ends up with herpes? The only thing that made her dislike Ben was a virus which she now has. Jane is going to feel like crap because her ideas of self worth were based on complete and utter bullshit.

Having contracted herpes these people have become the other (ie: the person they used to make fun of or think of as dirty) and it consumes them. They can’t get beyond how others may view them knowing what they used to think.

These folks are so beat down and fearful that many of them only want to date other folks with herpes. I really don’t want to attract someone who is scared of putting their self out there; someone who is just settling for another with the same virus.

If I date someone with herpes I want them to know they are still awesome. Keeping my status unlisted seems the best way to accomplish this. Someone will have to be bold enough to put themselves out there knowing their status and not knowing mine. I want that bravery for myself and from a partner.

Another reason I don’t give my status on my profile is that I don’t view the effort spent on someone else as a waste of time. Anyone who has ever uttered the phrase “you wasted my time” after dating someone when it didn’t work out is probably a piece of shit parading around as a human being and I put probably in there just to make me sound nicer.

Dating, hell life itself, is about taking chances and being vulnerable. If I date someone for a couple of dates (or months) and they drop some facts on me I can’t handle (like they watch the television show The Bachelor) I don’t view it as a waste of time. I took a chance and now I know we aren’t compatible. That’s good information to have. I consider information gained as a win. We didn’t work and I can look elsewhere.

The final reason I don’t list my status is that I’m perfectly comfortable talking about the fact that I have herpes so it’s not necessary for my profile to do that. I envision that dating me is a bit like blunt force trauma; someone is going to get all my truths in a very short period of time. As a result, I reveal my positive status fairly quickly so someone will know within three dates or less. By then, they have had the opportunity to briefly size me up (as I mentioned previously) and see if they view me as a potential partner.

Those are my reasons. Ultimately, I’m just a person looking for my person. In doing so, I hope to find someone who has done as much developmental work on them self as possible. Keeping my positive status off of my dating profile seems to be the best way to find a good match.

“Will You Give Me Herpes?”

Those were the words that were staring me in the face on my screen. I didn’t know what to think. Was someone pulling a prank or testing me in some weird fashion? As it turns out they were dead serious. This person had an STD fetish and while they didn’t want anything that could potentially end their life, they were very interested in contracting genital herpes.

I was taken aback for a second. After all, here was this aspect of me that I would gladly delete from my life if I could (pretty sure most with HSV would) and now someone else actually wanted this pesky little virus.

My answer came pretty readily. No, I would not intentionally give someone herpes. I have two goals related to this infection and the first is that my partners will be informed of my condition before engaging in any activity that is a risk to them. The second is to take every measure to ensure that I transfer this to no one. Life is unpredictable of course, but I need to know that I’m protecting who I’m with as much as possible.

If I were to have unprotected sex with them my first goal could remain intact as they would be informed. My second goal though could not survive. They explicitly wanted me to help them get herpes. Now, I don’t think that sharing herpes is as easy a task as it may seem but logistics was obviously not the problem here. I couldn’t bring myself to knowingly give someone this virus. Just for the sake of argument, even if I could bring myself to participate in this person’s fetish I would bump up against my next difficulty.

What if they later on they come to regret having herpes? This is admittedly a complex issue for me because I firmly believe in a person’s autonomy. People should be able to make their own decisions and those decisions don’t have to align with my desires. However, this decision does directly involve me and as an actor in this moral dilemma I get to have a say about how I use my body.

Putting aside the philosophical argument of whether full autonomy can ever be experienced I’m going to maintain here that it can. It’s one of the reasons I want to be completely truthful with those in my life. I want their decisions to be made with every bit of information possible. The more info they have the better decision they can make. If a partner knows my condition, the nature of the disease, means of transmission, and precautionary measures we can employ then they have as much knowledge as I do. We have at least reached parity on that front.

If I went ahead and tried to help them I would be respecting their autonomy. However, I had reason to believe that they weren’t acting in their best interest. To start with they had a STD fetish. Sometimes fetishes become almost like a pathology which would be cause for concern. I ruled this out though because in my very non-professional opinion there was a desire present to avoid injury such as HIV. I feel like this avoidance of harm sidestepped the pathology issue.

Regardless, fetishes come and go. This person was also 18 years of age and the younglings are still figuring out who they are and what they want. For fucks sake, I’m 41 (as of this writing) and I’m still working on that. It’s part of self growth and it’s a continuous process as we age. Our work is never done in this respect.

I dislike undermining someone’s autonomy but there is a chance that later in life they might regret intentionally contracting herpes. I don’t want to be part of that scenario. That is my choice. If they decide to continue trying to get some type of STD/I then that is their choice.

Another thought I had was isn’t life about experiences and wouldn’t not having sex be a lack of experience? As someone who is single I don’t have sex more days than I do, but it doesn’t feel like a lack of experience. Then again, on those days I don’t have an offer laid at my feet like this.

Ultimately, I concluded that perhaps I may miss out on a sexual experience or two with this person but that regret is much to do about nothing so long as I can avoid a much worse ethical regret. I don’t feel as if I’m missing out. Even if life is only about experiences (a notion I do not explicitly subscribe to) then this whole situation is certainly a much more unique scenario (i.e. experience) than having sex will likely ever be.

All in all, this is the right decision for me to make. I want to protect this person even though I’ve never met them and even though I am disregarding their wishes. I also want to feel good about my role in the world and my relationships with others. This is certainly a situation I never thought I would encounter and yet here I am.

I would say life definitely threw me a curve with this one but I am happy with the outcome. Maybe this person will fulfill their fetish. So be it. If that happens then at least I can rest well knowing I wasn’t part of it. That good feeling will last far longer than any from sex ever will.