Herpes disclosure

[skeas.livejournal.com]

The recent post about herpes brought up some questions for me.

My question is: Is it always necessary for an infected person to tell a potential partner?

From a theoretical standpoint, YES! Yes, yes, yes! But consider a few scenarios:

You haven't had an outbreak since your first one--15 years ago. As most of us know, herpes is transmittable even when the infected person doesn't have a sore. However, plenty of us infected people just avoid sex/kissing when we have a sore, and the other partner is fine. Do you still let your partner know about an outbreak you had at 20, when you are now 35? Do you risk ruining the whole relationship (because people generally freak out when the word "herpes" in involved) over a nearly negligible risk?

You have oral herpes. Studies show that 80% of us have herpes antibodies, and might be carriers of the disease without even knowing it. Yet I've never, ever heard of someone fessing up before a liplock. Do you let everyone you are about to kiss know that you have oral herpes? I personally feel like everyone is aware of--or should be aware of--a certain risk that's involved with intimate behavior like kissing or sex. You could catch mono, a cold, the flu, herpes, et cetera. You do what you can to prevent it, but it's still there.

For that matter, is there a difference between disclosing about oral herpes (which you can write off under the more innocuous name of cold sores) and genital herpes? Do you have more of a responsibility to tell a partner about genital herpes? And why?

Comments

[jocelina.livejournal.com]

I think that people tend to view HSV-1 as a less troublesome virus because often people become infected with it when they're fairly young and their bodies have plenty of time to build up an immunity to it, so their outbreaks during adulthood tend to be relatively mild (one or two cold sores) whereas adults who contract HSV-2 can have more severe genital outbreaks, at least at first. Initial outbreaks of HSV-1 can be quite unpleasant too (especially for children, according to this NYT article (http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/herpes-simplex/symptoms.html)), but since most people who have it likely experienced their first outbreak a very long time ago, they may not take this into account when evaluating the risk of passing it on to a partner.

Interestingly enough, one of the most serious (and fortunately very rare) possible complications of herpes, herpes encephalitis (http://professionals.epilepsy.com/page/viral_herp_enceph.html), is usually caused by HSV-1, at least in adults (in newborns, though, it's generally caused by HSV-2).

I think you're right that our collective perception of HSV-2 is a bit out of whack. I can understand why people wouldn't want to have to deal with having it, of course (I know I would much prefer not to contract either type of HSV), but I think that some of that negative association is based on the social rather than the medical repercussions.