Something Positive for Positive People

Do dating sites exclusively designed for people living with herpes do more harm than good? Do they do anything at all? Honestly, it's a matter of perception. How we use the resources we have access to determine their value in this case, not the other way around. The sites that don't encourage forthcoming about STI status don't overtly perpetuate stigma like their counterparts, but they stigmatize. It is a universal fact that people link up through these dating apps and they engage in sex, but where are tools and resources to help facilitate safer sex conversations? These are things that warrant ongoing discussion, but after a poll, Instagram actually came up a lot in terms of being the number 1 dating site for people with HSV, which I go deeper into explaining how we can make ANY space we occupy the number 1 dating site PERIOD.

The action of keeping away from or not doing something is avoidance. Letting go is a willingness to accept what is. I want to relate this to discordant relationships where one person has herpes and the other doesn't. Far too often we hear about rejections and "successful" disclosures (and ya'll know how I feel about that). But what about post-disclosure? In this episode we take expectation setting and tie in the conversation from episode 154 about being WITH vs BEING with someone. It's about our boundaries, expectation setting and anchoring in our values. I'm writing this before recording with the intention of staying on topic but we will likely end up with a tangent lol. Nah I kid I kid . . . I have my notes to keep me on track. As I hit submit and finalize these notes after having recorded, yeah I ended up making some pretty solid other points as well haha. Adding to this after release . . . I got some good feedback on the overall episode even though I feel it could've been 2 separate episodes. Thanks for rocking with me ya'll.

I’ve been tested at this non profit organization prior to its name change and I hope that this and upcoming episodes will encourage people to seek out these kinds of places because they are doing it RIGHT ya’ll. The Director of Prevention Services, Jon Martin, sits down with me masked up and 6 feet apart in order to discuss the importance of diversity on staff when providing the customer service experience especially in regards to something as intimate as sexual health. Where this ties into SPFPP is that I mentioned how when people who had suicide ideation shared their struggles with me, I couldn’t empathize. Since starting the podcast, people have reached out and said that finding someone who relates to them in an episode has been super healing for them. Vivent Health is formally St. Louis Effort for AIDS and they are part of a much larger national network, and you can find them at www.viventhealth.org.

If you've ever just BEEN with someone (emphasis on BEEN) then you understand that you experience this sense of peace and freedom that comes with not having to modify your behavior around them. Whereas when you're being WITH someone (emphasis on WITH) where you may resist your natural state of existence somehow. I talk through the experience of being WITH and BEING with myself and how that's come into my awareness after having tested positive for COVID. I was scared. I wasn't scared I was going to die or anything, just scared at how it impacted my finances having not been able to work for three weeks. I was afraid of losing my friends. I was afraid of having to adapt yet again to an uncomfortable situation. I was afraid of having to face a stigma that parallels that of being diagnosed with genital HSV. Through it all, I was able to BE with myself those three weeks in isolation. I would've never been able to because I'm always being WITH others in my day to day life whether online or in person. I'm always WITH my thoughts if I'm alone and this keeps my identification and sense of self focused on what's not me. This podcast episode highlights and uses examples of how I've personally grown through my experiences with therapy, not because of my herpes diagnosis but because of what my herpes diagnosis represents for me in terms of my patterns of behavior. I'm proud of myself for this episode because I was able to so well articulate my struggles and successes through a very challenging period in my life.

Liz and I have been missing one another for this interview since she first learned she was pregnant. It only took a pandemic and me getting COVID to sit my ass down for long enough to catch up with her. We talk about dating while pregnant with HSV, her leaving her 5 year relationship and living her best life for a short time if you know what I mean, and having gotten herpes from the person she was hoping it was because she liked him the most. Our conversation emphasizes the point again of how the younger generations now are handling their HSV diagnosis with such confidence having access to more resources and the willingness to seek them out compared to me not even considering support until I was almost 30 years old. Liz sought help for her depression and shared some useful tips for anyone else navigating depression as well. A question that comes to mind is can someone be so attractive that you just don't mind that they gave you herpes?

Dave shares with us his experience being diagnosed with genital HSV2 9 months prior to this recording. His partner shared with him that she'd been positive for more than 20 years, they took precautions and he experienced his first outbreak after their first time having intercourse together. Dave and I discussed before that the convo could get heavy so I checked in throughout the recording as he shared some vulnerable pieces of himself from having narcissistic parents and the connection that has to him seeking dominatrixes and overall more emotionally abusive and controlling women as partners. We touch on prostatitis (inflammation of the prostate) and some of the shame that comes with the symptoms of it. I had this as a result of chlamydia, he may have developed it from being pegged by a partner, and yet there's still a hint of shame there we can sense as he speaks to the symptoms of the pain, erectile dysfunction and trouble urinating. I am proud of Dave for stepping up and sharing his experience and know his vulnerability will keep the future dudes who agree to record a podcast from ghosting me when our time to record comes. Literally the only people who've ghosted me have been straight dudes when it comes to this podcast.

Diagnosed with genital HSV2 at age 17, we catch up with 21 year old Gemini who really demonstrates how far of a difference there is in how her disclosure experiences went compared to mine being a decade apart in age. We talk about secondarily disclosure where your friends all know already so if someone you know second hand is interested in dating you, then they do it for you. What's interesting is that those friends who know also stand up for you as someone with herpes if someone gets to talking slick at the mouth about you or herpes in general. While the first person she told was someone she trusted, that person still went off and told the entire school. While Gemini has always been alternative, it didn't stop the athletes in relationships with the most popular cheerleader from attempting to shoot their shot with her. Gemini is also queer identifying and woke af as you can hear from our conversation. She's a survivor of suicide (multiple siblings) so we touch on that and how she seemingly has to be the glue/strength of her family. This is a really great interview and while I sound terrible due to being sick, I'm glad we were able to make an online interview work well here. Oh and we talk about making your friend group your dating pool which I'm all about right now!

I chat with former traveling Canadian, Christian speaker, Meagan, who spoke to high school kids with a non profit organization called “Live Different” sharing her story about her herpes diagnosis for 5.5 years. Meagan shares the reality of what it means to be open about your status as a career before you've done your own healing. After experiencing compassion fatigue to the extreme, she shut off her emotions and went from enthusiastically inspiring hope to young adults through her story to just getting a job done. After falling into a depressed state, she quit speaking and eventually sought out therapy. Her therapist pointed out early on that her attempt to heal was a cycle of retraumatization that just kept eating away at her. We learn that venting is in fact NOT a form of therapy. We learn that not everyone is qualified to present a solution to a problem they aren't educated in and that we should seek guidance from those who are. We learn that it is important to take care of ourselves before we offer to be there and care for others as a way of avoiding our own healing process.

After ending her divorce from her first everything, our guest this week shares her experience entering the dating world after having done everything 'right' and then ending up with someone who did not disclose their HSV status to her. As we talk through her experience, you get a sense that he knew he had it and the point of realization was where she just got an intuitive nudge to open a drawer where his acyclovir prescribed to him with a date of six months prior resided. When she confronted him, he responded in a very dismissively honest way that is very scary and manipulative. I want to make sure I'm using this term here properly so correct me if I'm wrong when you listen, but gaslighting. So here we have someone who married her first, divorced and entered the dating world again, only to now be stigmatized because of her diagnosis of HSV. She had sex with two people. The stigma is not reality. According to the stigma of HSV, she had sex with many people and should've waited until marriage to have intercourse. She still got it. Where's the stigma and shaming toward people who know they have it but choose not to disclose? Where's the stigma toward medical professionals who spread inaccurate information and negate STD prevention efforts with their own self-shaming and stigma? Last thing to touch on here is the connection between sexual health and mental health. This episode says more about the person who exposed our guest to the virus than it does about her. Men's unwillingness to deal with their diagnosis in a healthy way is part of what keeps the stigma so prevalent. Women are susceptible to shame as a result of our actions whereas men can go into denial or repress the emotions altogether and act like they aren't impacted at all as you'll hear in this episode.

You ever disclose your HSV status to a potential partner and they still agree to move forward with physical intimacy? Afterwards, did you ever find yourself annoyed with them, recognizing areas of incompatibility, realizing you've become someone you aren't in the relationship and then look up and it's been a few months or years that this has been going on and now you want out? Or how about this . . . Have you ever found yourself matching with someone who also has herpes? You're attracted, you overlook a few red flags, and then look up and its been years since you were happy. You completely miss who the other person truly is because you've prioritized the convenience of your shared HSV status in order to just not have to deal with the feels that come with it. Herpes is inconvenient in more ways than outbreaks. And we learn we have to take care of ourselves as a result. Herpes sets boundaries with our bodies, so we have to inconveniently set boundaries for ourselves.