Dating after a Herpes Diagnosis

It’s totally possible and your dating life can be totally normal. In general we put so much on our plate to date. Things like: he has to be the one, or I’m so tired of dating immature people, are there any good ones left out there, ugh, here we go again and so on. We females put pressure on ourselves to find a good one and settle down, it’s what society expects from us. Regardless there is pressure from all angles to date and find someone. 

Then we also have the pressure of the casual sex. That has become a huge part of the hookup culture and the dating culture. Yes, it sounds fun and liberating, but most it is pressure based. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to who say that they are feeling the pressure to hookup, because that is just that their age group is doing. 

So we take the pressure of finding the right one all the way to the other side of pressure of hooking up and now lets throw herpes in the mix. Talk about stressful.

OK, so how does dating after herpes look? Well, actually pretty much the same except it requires a sexual health talk. 

Probably before you were diagnosed with herpes your sex talk probably went something like this; “hey are you clean” or “let’s use a condom to be safe.” Or something similar to this. Or nothing at all. I’m guilty of this too. Having the safe sex talk is something that we’re not taught and something that we just feel so uncomfortable doing. The truth here is that this is something we all should have been having before we got herpes. Now that we have herpes we’re forced to have this conversation and that’s a good thing. 

What I recommend is setting up your own expectations of what makes you feel comfortable. Do you want your partner to get tested? Are you going to use a condom? Are you on the antiviral? Is this something that is a casual thing? Is it a one night stand? Is it a long term relationship? And so on. You can have all the one night stands you want with herpes but you don’t have to either. 

What I'm saying is, herpes doesn’t have anything to do with your dating. It’s up to you to decide how you want to proceed. How are you going to set up the sex talk? What boundaries are you going to feel comfortable with? Having the herpes disclosure is an absolute must have but after that it’s totally up to you how you want to proceed. The safest way is for both you and your partner to get tested prior to sleeping together but that is not always an option so then it’s up to you to decide what works for you. 

If your herpes diagnosis is something that is holding you back from dating then the Tell Your Partner toolkit is something that you’ll want to check out. It has 14 different videos that will walk you through how to disclose. It ranges from hookups to long term partnerships to past partners and whatever else you want to call it in-between. Anyway there is so much great information there you’ll want to check it out. Go here to get more information and access to the toolkit now.

Tell Your Partner Toolkit