CARNAL NATION

Why are you asking? Seriously, you can get the medical facts from the CDC website, so what is it you want to know?

Up to 90% of the people who have it don’t know it (and don’t have symptoms). Seventy percent of the people who got it did so from somebody who wasn’t symptomatic. It’s a crapshoot.

If your husband is taking the meds, using condoms (always, not almost always), and avoiding sex during an outbreak, he’s looking at a very low chance of infecting a partner. Therefore, how far he should go in warning people about every risk then becomes a moral/ethical question. That’s not the PC answer, but it is the real-world one. If he’s already talking about safer sex and other risks (e.g., HIV and Hep-C) with partners, then talking about herpes is not going to be a big deal. If he doesn’t already have those conversations, then herpes is going to be pretty low on his radar.

How far back in his sexual history does he need to go? Tell everybody with whom he’s had unprotected sex in the last year (Yeah, I know you’re not going to, but I have to say it).  What’s the real-world version?  Well, this is my personal view: tell anybody with whom you’re having unprotected sex (including oral); the rest are optional if you’re on the meds and religious about condom use.
 

A herpes diagnosis seems to carry a heavy weight for a lot of people, and I certainly wasn’t thrilled when I got mine. My doctor informed me that it was possible I had been infected a long time ago with the virus remaining dormant until my primary outbreak.  However, symptoms generally appear 3 days to 2 weeks after initial exposure. I decided to make a list of the people I had slept with in the past couple of months as well as a list of previous partners I wanted to keep in sexual contact with whether or not we had gotten together recently. Since none of my partners had told me that they had herpes (and many people don’t even know they have it), I wanted to pass that info onto my recent partners who may have shared it with me unwittingly or been exposed before I knew. I called up long-standing partners so that they could get the news from me outside of a steamy encounter.

As far as telling new partners, I’ve always been open with this information during a safer sex negotiation. It’s important to me that my partners make an informed choice about having sex with me, but I am sometimes frustrated. I’ve found that my own research about herpes presented calmly during a safer sex negotiation helps things go more smoothly. Sometimes I get turned down, but being open has spared me a lot of worry. I also found that most people were really receptive to my news, and having that conversation has gotten easier over time. Your health is yours to share with as many or as few people as you see fit, but, by being honest, you also communicate the fact that you are trustworthy and care about your partners. 
 

Ah, herpes, the gift that can keep on giving. As you may know, herpes is quite common—the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that by age 50, 90% of the population has oral herpes (cold sores, HSV-1) while 25% has genital herpes (HSV-2). It’s also possible to have HSV-1 outbreaks on the genitals.

One sure way to keep herpes around is to not tell your partners. The tricky bit is determining where your husband acquired it. There’s really no way of knowing. He may even have gotten it from you! Many of us carry the virus and don’t know it. It can be latent for years before a recognized outbreak occurs. It’s also possible to spread herpes in the absence of an outbreak or any symptoms through a process called asymptomatic shedding.

Yes, tell your partners. You’ll be doing them a big favor. To be totally squeaky clean, tell all your current and past partners. It could be fun to drag some of those skeletons out of the closet! Maybe you could throw a big party where once all your guests arrive, you both jump out and yell, “Surprise!” Now that would be kinky!