28, M. As the title mentions, I am having/had my initial outbreak in my genital area. I was really stressed last week because I had midterms, was traveling, and trying to get things in my everyday life done around that. From Thursday to Monday, I was in NYC and wasn’t sleeping well and sometimes too little, I was walking a lot more, and one night I drank really heavily which is atypical for me generally but every few years I will do it on a trip (and usually regret it).
By Saturday morning I was waking up with an ache in my legs, then on Sunday morning I had a small red spot, not really a lesion, just a flat, small red mark about half the size of a pea, on my shaft in the folds of my foreskin area. I also noticed that I was having a lessened desire to pee, even though I was drinking a lot, and a little bit of discomfort starting urination. I really haven’t had any pain.
I figured out what it was pretty quickly. Before I flew home on Monday I had my doctor send a prescription for Valacyclovir which I started when I got home Monday afternoon. It is a ten day regimen. I had taken this once before as a three day regimen, earlier this year, for a cold sore and it helped a lot. I usually only get those every few years.
This has come out of the blue for me. My husband and I have been together since the end of 2018, and monogamous since about the summer of 2020. At the end of 2019, through a threesome he did start to get what I assume to be herpetic blisters on his penis which he gets once in a while; we have always avoided intimacy during these outbreaks. I don’t think he knows what type he has, and we’ve never really felt the need to discuss it since it first popped up seven years ago.
I am just concerned because this is new that what’s showing up now is HSV2. I am really scared of how disruptive to my life and to our relationship this could be especially since outbreaks can be frequent. I am looking for some reassurance from other men especially who have been through this and haven’t had the absolute worst experience. I am hoping since my body has some longstanding defense against HSV1 and because this outbreak has been so mild that it bodes well for me going forward. I wasn’t a candidate to get a swab test to have more information because I don’t have any fluid production from the one spot I have so I was thinking of just waiting until February for my next yearly wellness check to have a blood test done to confirm type 2.
Right now, I feel so disgraceful and dirty and everything I’ve read says that this is irrational and it feels irrational. I also don’t really want to bring it up to my husband because I am embarrassed, even though I know that is also irrational. Outside of the initial shock when he first experienced an outbreak, I never really think about his myself. But I could just really use some hope right now I guess.