I would like to have some responsible, ethical, mutually-affirming casual sex in my life. I have genital herpes. How does this work? Is it even possible?
So if it matters, I'm a mid-30s heterosexual cis male.
I am single and not interested in an actual relationship right now for Reasons, but would like to find someone to have sex with at least semi-regularly. Doesn't necessarily need to always be the same person, though an ongoing arrangement with one other person would also be fine. I'm not even really looking for a friends-with-benefits situation, just for someone who wants to meet up, have sex, and then go our separate ways. Just the "benefits," so to speak.
I have genital herpes. I've had it for several years now, and aside from the initial outbreak (which was tested and confirmed to be HSV-1) I've never had any symptoms whatsoever. I have a prescription for Valtrex which I don't take but which I would take consistently if I were having sex with people who were HSV negative. Condoms are fine too, obviously.
I have had sexual partners since contracting HSV, but always in the context of a committed relationship. The procedure has always been to disclose as soon as sex looks like it might be on the horizon, have the conversation where I answer questions about what it means for my life and what my understanding of the risks is, let her think about it for as long as she needs to, and then start having sex once she's decided she's comfortable with it. (So far nobody has decided that they're not comfortable with it, though of course that's a possibility.)
This model works fine in a committed relationship but it doesn't seem like it would translate well to more casual sexual encounters. The initial conversation is pretty unsexy, and there's always a period of days or weeks where she's ruminating on the matter, doing her own research, etc. before she gets back to me. HSV hasn't had a major impact on my life (needing to do this disclosure business is honestly the biggest impact by far) but I can see how if the tables were turned I probably would not want to just casually bang someone who might give me a lifelong, stigmatized sexual disease. Someone I was really into and wanted to have a relationship with, sure. Someone who I just wanted to have sex with a few times and then move on, no. Probably some women exist who would be fine with it, but a lot of them wouldn't be and I can understand why.
So where does this leave me in terms of wanting to find a casual sexual partner? Not disclosing and just hoping for the best is not an option, I feel like that would be pretty scummy even though my understanding is that I'm a pretty low transmission risk. Finding someone else who also has HSV sounds like it would solve a lot of problems, but I can't conceive of how I would go about doing that without asking some pretty invasive questions right off the bat.
And frankly, I don't really know how I would go about finding partners for casual sex to begin with, even if I didn't have HSV. I'm not super outgoing, I don't live in a city, and while I've had my share of partners over the years including some casual ones, that was all in a different context at a different time in my life and I don't really think I can go back to those days. I'm not sure how to approach this even on easy mode, let alone as someone with an STI. But if there's a way to do this that's responsible and ethical and reasonably likely to be successful, I'd love to know about it.
Thanks very much for your advice. If you would like to respond privately, send emails to hsvaskmethrowaway@gmail.com |
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