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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: September 1st, 2023

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  • There’s two variants. One is extremely harmless and is generally oral. This is the one that nearly everyone has and no one really notices. The other variant is generally genital (though either one can be in either place) and is more severe and less common. The first outbreak can be really bad, subsequent ones less so. An estimated 1 in 10 adults in the US have it, though I’d imagine it skews a lot more towards highly sexually active communities. It can be transmitted even if you don’t actively have sores, though that’s much rather. Condoms also don’t prevent transmission, though again they make it much more unlikely. While getting it certainly doesn’t have to be the end of the world it is worse than they generally say.


  • Telling people it’s no big deal is doing them a direct misservice. By all means it should be destimized but you should also be honest about the risks and realities of what it can mean. What happened to me might be a worse case scenario but the average first breakout is still way worse than you would have people believe, and people should know what can actually happen. I’m so sick of people being dismissive of it.

    Half the time when I’m confiding in a friend about how my life has and is still going downhill and I tell them about the herpes the first words out of their mouth is “it’s no big deal, everyone has it” and it makes me feel so alone. It can be a big deal and it’s not as common as people make out.


  • Hey, it’s 1 in 10 for the genital version in the U.S. Not common. When someone dismissively says “oh it’s not that bad, it’s not the end of the world”, they’re not the ones who had to deal with pain of taking shits with sores in their ass. To deal with having a hard time being able to tell the difference between gas, liquid, and solids knocking at the door while on stool softeners to help make shits less painful. They’re not the ones who have to have the downright humiliating “oh by the way I have herpes, are you ok with that” talk. (They never are).The fact is, it’s debilitated me mentally and physically. The scarring from it has taken all the pleasure away from anal for me, and it still hurts to shit half the time. Don’t treat it so fucking lightly.