Episode 81: Casual Disclosure
There’s a range of emotions that come with dating. While it starts often with physical attraction, it’s common to decide to look at the more important things once the person has you by the eyes. From there, you choose to have a written exchange if you’re on a dating site like Dating Positives, or a verbal exchange if you’re in a social setting. From there you’re deciding whether or not this person is compatible with you. What’s amazing about this process is that you are naturally empowered as the chooser. “Are they a fit for me?” is the question we’re answering during the exchange with the potential partner. By the end of the exchange, we know if we want another one or if there’s no need for doing it again. If not, we move on and repeat this process with the next potential partner.
And then there’s those of us who can’t relate to the luxury of being able to decide based on appearance if someone is a fit for us. Physical attraction, conversation, lifestyle, etc. tends to carry a much lighter load when you seek partners based on whether or not you’re a fit for them. I struggled with this after my positive herpes diagnosis for years. I began to look at prospective partners based on how they viewed me. Am I a right fit for you? What can I do to be a better fit? And then there was always the lingering covert expectation of “if I’m everything else they need in a partner, then they won’t mind that I have herpes”. Where did these thoughts come from between the time I likely contracted herpes and when I actually found out I had herpes? Nothing changed except for the fact that I was now aware of something that just lived in my body. I let its coming out of hiding completely change the way I did dating and relationships.
I found someone who was able to elaborate almost parallel to my experience around this time and decided to have a conversation with her on the Something Positive for Positive People Podcast where I interviewed her about dating with herpes. Our guest for this episode talks about making dating decisions from this space of being chosen rather than being the chooser and just how it can mess with your head to have to potentially deal with that rejection, especially in a casual dating environment. Living in Bali, she shares the experiences she’s had disclosing her positive status to partners and the various responses she’s gotten from partners still not wanting to use condoms, changing their mind from accepting her status to not accepting it, the importance of disclosing to casual partners or not disclosing, and then of course being flat out rejected.
Check out this episode to hear about Adrienne’s experience casual dating and disclosing and not disclosing to partners in this casual atmosphere. What we learned from these experiences and what her audience on Instagram surprisingly thinks about whether or not to disclose to casual sexual partners.
About the guest:
Adrienne Rommel, is a Certified Nutritional Practitioner, Yoga Teacher and Mindfulness Coach from Toronto, Canada has a passion for women’s sexual health and wellness. As a 37-year young woman, she’s struggled with her own Yoni and sexual health issues since she was a teenager. For her, it was the lack of sexual education and increased antibiotic use as a child, long-term birth control pill use, lack of STI awareness, bad diet, high stress lifestyle and unresolved emotional trauma that contributed to her own personal sexual health issues. Having struggled with her own sexual health for half her life, she’s lived with HSV-2 genitally for 16 years and is prone to yeast infections, but has healed herself through diet and natural holistic wellness and healing practices. Experiencing it first-hand and having the knowledge as a Certified Holistic Nutritionist, she helps women who are struggling with their own personal Yoni and sexual health issues, heal their bodies and Yoni’s from the inside out, just like she healed her own. She is also a new member of the Herpes Activist Network Dismantling Stigma, HANDS! Adrienne can be connected with on: Instagram, Facebook, Youtube @YoniNutritionist and her website is www.yoninutritionist.com
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