DATING WITH HERPES IS JUST LIKE DATING

Courtney Brame (he/him/his) is the Founder of Something Positive for Positive People (www.spfpp.org), a 501c3 non profit organization highlighting the intersections of sexual health and mental health stigma. Courtney's advocacy began in 2017 after discovering that people who were diagnosed with herpes struggled with suicide ideation. This led to him interviewing people living with herpes and sharing their experiences as a way of giving folks a blueprint to navigate herpes stigma. These efforts evolved into addressing the public health field directly as now the organization provides simulated experiences for health care providers to practice taking a sexual history. The goal of this is to advocate for anti-stigmatizing, identity validating, sex-positive health care. Courtney also hosts a podcast by the same name (SPFPP) where you can hear these stories and experiences directly. Follow his work on Instagram at @CourtneyBrame_, or on Twitter and Reddit at @HonMyChest.

Rejection in dating happens. Rejection with herpes ALSO happens. The only difference is that it is RIGHT there on the surface to be blamed for any of the reasons above being listed... but intensified.

QUICK LINKS:

1. What It's Like Dating with Herpes
2. How to Use a Dating App with HSV
3. Something Positive for Positive People

What It's Like Dating with Herpes

The other person creating space and distance between us (or ghosting altogether) doesn’t end at “I guess they’re just not that interested in me.” Assuming that disclosure has occurred, it becomes “because I have herpes." While that very well COULD be the case with someone we have interest in, we don’t KNOW that unless we ask the person, which sometimes we can’t do because we get unmatched/blocked before we have a means of contacting the person.

My dating style is forced to be diversified.

I’ll give you an example from my personal life. I’ve been positive for genital HSV2, the virus that causes primarily genital herpes outbreaks which means the infection is ALWAYS in me lying dormant. There are times where physical symptoms present themselves in my genital region. These symptoms have occurred 4 times over the last 9 years since I’ve known my status during times of extreme stress, poor nutrition, absence of exercise routine, and one weekend where I had WAY too much sugar consumption. During these windows where physical symptoms are present, I typically avoid sex and take the medication prescribed. Outside of that, herpes doesn’t impact me personally at all. I do find that the lack of general knowledge about it has an influence on my ability to connect with others sexually in the quantity I’d like, but the trade off for quality is something I wouldn’t trade for the world.

I’m on Tinder and a few other dating sites for the same reason anyone else would be on dating sites. On some, I have my herpes status listed there, on others, I don’t. My dating style is forced to be diversified and I can practice different ways of disclosing my STI status to partners before intimacy occurs. 

How to Navigate Dating App's with HSV

So this past Friday night, I matched with a person who’s bio simply says, “Men are trash”. Classy, right? So I initiate with a “damn, can we at least be garbage? That at least sounds a little more sophisticated.” And the banter begins. It’s a pleasant exchange for maybe 7 back and forth messages and she shifted the conversation. I have “sex education” listed in my bio as something I’m passionate about and have a career in. She asked me about it so I told her that I work at the intersection of sexual health and mental health, educate youth educators on talking to youth about sex, and give health care providers practice taking a sexual history. She was impressed and enthusiastically expressed having sought out a non-profit specifically to educate the youth she works with in the realm of sexuality. I got excited too, reading that text!

I acknowledged the obvious which is that we’re shifting from me being on Tinder for the sake of being on Tinder, which implies what it implies to abruptly shifting into a potential business relationship. Not everyone can handle mixing business with pleasure and since my business is pleasure, I needed to know if that was something she was open to. She flirtingly said she was absolutely down for both. I sent her my website for her to check out. Shortly after, she lets me know she’s excited about our first date where we’d talk more since she had so many questions. As I’m typing my reply, the messages suddenly disappear as if I’m typing to myself. I knew what had happened, but I didn’t lead with my expectation of previous experiences, so I went back to look at her profile and it was just not there anymore. 

My website is www.spfpp.org. My personal story living with herpes is all on the “about us” page. I’m confident the creation of space and distance AKA her running for the hills likely came when she got to that point of reading. I tried to uncouple my herpes status from this encounter in order to just make myself normal. I’m sure people get unmatched and ghosted after talking about their work all the time, right? A person can go from super interested, to “UNMATCH/BLOCK” mode in a few seconds because you share something with them that doesn’t align with their values. These can be views on having kids, religion, politics, Veganism, racism, non-hetero issues, gun violence, police brutality . . . but I couldn’t do that because there was an interest and curiosity both in me, my passion, and my work until that piece of information about me was presented.

Woke me is just like, well this speaks to the quality/quantity of partners available to me. While I have fewer partners, I also have fewer opportunities for incompatible partners. I didn’t have this filter 9 years ago when I found myself in unhealthy situationships with partners. I didn’t have a screening process before to determine the quality and interest of partners. Dating shifted for me, in that what herpes gave me 9 years ago was something most people who either don’t have it or don’t know they have it sometimes take 9 years of bad sex and dating to develop. I can’t say that this person did or didn’t align overall with me and that we wouldn’t or would have made for a great relationship, but one of my screeners is how does a person handle conflict in a relationship. If she was able to avoid having an uncomfortable conversation with me, we weren’t going to work out. What better way to make someone uncomfortable and screen them for a potential relationship than to find a way to tell them you have herpes, right!? 

While I have fewer partners, I also have fewer opportunities for incompatible partners. 

I’m a cis-gendered heterosexual male who’s upper-lower class in income, able-bodied, Black masculine man. My pronouns are he/him/his and I’m a sexual health educator who’s herpes diagnosis came in August 2012. I got through the physical symptoms pretty quickly. I checked with my most recent partners to see if any of them had herpes and they all said no. More than anything, I was just grateful that I hadn’t passed it on. No one wants to be that motherf*&^#$ who’s just running around giving people STDs. I navigated the next four years of my life really avoiding dating anyone who wasn’t recommended to me by a close friend. On multiple occasions, friends of mine who knew someone else with herpes just made an introduction for m. After the first time I got ghosted on Tinder…. There’s a pattern here lol. . . I decided I was tired of this being the excuse.

Something Positive for Positive People

I signed up for an online dating app called Positive Singles for people with herpes and boy did I get laid again. It wasn’t long after that I found out some people became suicidal because of their diagnosis, which wasn’t my experience at all. I was curious about why this was, so I started to just interview folks with herpes about their experiences navigating stigma from their diagnosis to dating. This became a way of getting people’s stories out as a blueprint for anyone newly diagnosed with herpes or anyone who’s going back into dating after not having it be an issue for a while. This is how Something Positive for Positive People was born. Over the years this evolved into a 501c3 non profit organization that serves primarily as a sexual health communications platform for the public. It also serves as an agency advocating for sex-positive, identity validating, sex-positive/pleasure positive healthcare by offering health care providers practice taking a sexual history with clients who may fall outside the hetero-normative presumptuous framework for care. At SPFPP, we also have 1-1 calls for people navigating disclosing their status, speaking to healthcare providers about their questions, and overall offering support and a sense of community for the struggles people have that stigma just doesn’t allow us to feel safe expressing to folks who don't understand.

If you’re someone who is struggling with your herpes diagnosis navigating the dating world, understand that dating with herpes is just like dating. Only now you have access to resources to turn your herpes disclosure into a screening tool for better quality of partners so that you can get the kind of relationship you want. Take it from me, while you’ll still experience rejection, there’s no greater rejection than the self-rejection of being afraid to put yourself out there for the kind of love you want. Stay Pleasure Positive!

Further Readings:
Living & Dating with Herpes: Very Well Mind
How to Reduce Shame & Stigma When You Have An STD: Every Day Health
Confronting STI Stigma: Outsmart Magazine

WITH PLEASURE, 

LOVERS