What You Need to Know before You Tell Your Friends and Family 

Hearing the words, “I’m clean” when talking about STI’s is so common. Personally it makes me cringe when I hear it. Typically when we’re about to be sexually active with a new partner the conversation usually uses the words, “don’t worry I’m clean” in it. Sound familiar?

Hear’s the deal, using the word “clean” when talking about herpes or any other STI is just silly. Firstly it adds a connotation that a person with herpes is a dirt…

What you need to know about oral sex and herpes

One of the common questions I get from the community has to do with oral sex. Oral sex is kind of left out of the equation when we’re talking about sex, sex education or sexual health. Typically what comes to mind when we talk about sex is just the plane old heterosexual vaginal sex. And then when we talk about safe sex or even in sex ed classes, oral sex is kinda just left out. It’s like it’s not really considered sex.  

Ok so here’s the deal, y…

Do you always have to use protection now that you have herpes?

The quick answer is no! You can absolutely have unprotected sex even if you have herpes. Before we dive deep and go into explanation on this let’s talk about how this is a huge myth and is one of the drivers for the stigma.

When we are diagnosed and told that we have herpes we automatically think that we’re going to be forced to use condoms for the rest of our lives, even when we’re married. Yuck! And this is not true. Yes, condoms…

You disclosed you have herpes, use protection and now your partner has it too. What to do next!

This is one of our biggest fears when we find out we have herpes. The last thing we want is to pass it to someone else and have them experience what we went through. I mean it’s physically painful and emotionally painful. 

One of the aspects I like to bring up is normally when we’re diagnosed with herpes it came to us by surprise. Either our partner didn’t tell us or our partner didn’t know. Either …

What Happens When Your Partner Finds Out You Have Herpes

Disclosing is one of the things that we fear the most when we’re diagnosed with herpes. There’s so much that we wrap up into dating and wanting to feel desired and now with a herpes diagnosis we are fearful that we’ll get rejected.  We either don’t disclose because we’re so caught up in the stigma and with the fear of rejection or we just got caught up in the moment and didn’t get a chance to disclose. Ok this happens...I get it but let…

This is one of the scariest things that cross our minds when we’re first diagnosed with herpes. A typical thought that goes through our minds is how awful our diagnosis was and how we’d never want anyone to experience the physical pain of the outbreak. Sometimes we feel like the guilt of giving herpes to someone would be the worst thing too. 

I get asked all the time in our Secret Society about how to deal with giving herpes to your partner. The truth is I’ve never touched on this because I’ve …

Is it harder to say I love you or I have herpes?

Let’s talk about those three little words that are brought up when you’re dating.

So I overheard someone say that it's so hard to say those three little words. I immediately thought of the words I LOVE YOU.  Right? I mean wouldn't you? We’ve been so marketed to by hallmark and diamonds are for every type of campaigns that when we think of the three little words we think of  I LOVE YOU. But as the conversation continued and I heard the three word…

So glad you’re here today because we have a special guest, my husband. Ok, so you all have asked for Bill to share his side when it comes to me having herpes. So today I share how I disclosed to him and then we get his reaction to me disclosing.

Disclosing is one of the hardest things that people with herpes have to deal with. After the initial shock of finding out about your herpes diagnosis the next biggie to overcome is disclosing. If this is something that’s preventing you from dating plea…

Life With Herpes

Thank you for joining us today on the Life With Herpes Show. As always, I am excited you are here and grateful you are here so thank you.   Ok...I want to get right to it. I am asked daily how do I prevent passing herpes to my partner. Or I’m asked can I pass herpes to my partner? OR I am asked if I take the antiviral and use a condom can I pass herpes to my partner?   First I want to address why we don’t want to give someone herpes. Of course, the main reason is because we d…

What Do I Do Now?

 Hi my friend. Ok, firstly, breath. If you just did this or have been in a relationship with someone have not told them yet that you have herpes then just breath. Let me first start off by saying, I personally did not just sleep with someone and forget to tell them.  However, I know how hard it is to tell someone and in the heat of the moment we get scared and the convo just doesn’t happen. I hear it a lot in our one on one coaching sessions or its the reason why a lot of us …