SPFPP 335: Who Gave me herpes?
Who Gave Me Herpes?
This is for the person looking for an answer to this question. While on the surface what you may be seeking is just to understand how you got it and when you got it, there are several potential undercurrents of thoughts gathering in order to form a narrative.
The human mind likes to make things “complete” by piecing puzzle pieces together, and we can only do that with all the information. We may not want to accept that the pieces we have make up the puzzle so we begin to piece together things that COULD be, but we don’t have enough evidence for.
Let’s say we’re feeling angry. The anger can be because we believe we know exactly who gave us herpes. We think they’ve been lying to us about not knowing they have it. They showed us negative test results and that still isn’t convincing. We justify having only been with them and that the few others we’ve had sex with while we’re no longer with them are “good” people and would never do that to us. So we give ourselves a pass on our decision-making for the others while ruminating on this different person that we put all this pressure on to prove to us they aren’t the person who gave us herpes.
This is a very specific example because it’s so common. It’s like we want to excuse ourselves from the fact that we had sex by making it less about that there’s just an inherent risk of this happening and more about the fact that there’s an awful person out there who “did this to me.” The reality is that our education on herpes is terrible, we’re not taught how to minimize risks of STIs in a way that works for how we date, our herpes tests are most accurate with symptoms present, and we just don’t have a lot of good information to help us navigate conversations around herpes.
Knowing these things is never enough to satisfy us though. “Who gave me herpes?” is always a lingering question that’ll haunt you if you feed it. Let’s say you find out who gave you herpes. Then what? Do you just shrug it off and go, “okay well now I know?” If you never find out, are you going to continue to look for ways to find out? Will you stalk the person until you get some kind of evidence to justify your anger about your diagnosis?
I want to help you get to a point where finding out who gave you herpes is seen for what it is, an excuse to be angry so that you can just let yourself be angry. Part of my work through my non profit supporting people navigating herpes stigma, Something Positive for Positive People is to help people identify and experience the emotion they feel about their herpes diagnosis. This then alleviates a major stress factor which effectively reduces the possibility of experiencing physical symptoms as shown in our latest HSV survey which will be presented at our Herpes Stigma Virtual Conference in May. Emotional well-being is one of our top priorities and while Yoga and Meditation support our efforts to bring awareness to the emotion, being present with it for it to be experienced is really how we begin to allow it to move through us.
First you have to be willing to ask why you want to know who gave it to you. From here, let’s say you know who the culprit is. Now what? Now you’ve given yourself an unhealthy way to cope with your anger. The narrative becomes that this person did something to you rather than this just being something that occurred as an outcome of your choice. The power you give to that narrative does nothing over time for your healing process. You want to be angry. Be angry. Wanting to be angry at a person for a decision you made does nothing for your healing process besides give you permission to avoid feeling that anger yourself.
Finding out who gave you herpes becomes irrelevant when we look at the emotional payoff we seek from it. We don’t necessarily need to understand why we want to know because it doesn’t change anything as far as how we feel, we just have an excuse to feel it and a narrative that dismisses us from our own accountability for the outcome.
To get through this, try imagining that your outcome is right. Let’s say you did find out who gave you herpes. Picture how you’d move forward from that. Does this person receive your anger now every time you think about your diagnosis? Let’s say you accept that you’ll never know who gave you herpes. Moving forward are you going to allow your anger to radiate outward evenly toward everyone who MIGHT have given you herpes? Is this going to get in the way of your ability to connect with someone who, because you already got it, CANNOT give you herpes again (unless they have the other type of herpes)?
Now the best case scenario is that we see our anger for what it is, and we dig a little deeper there. It’s connected to fear. There’s a fear of not being accepted because we can’t even accept the anger ourselves. We can’t accept the diagnosis because we need a reason to justify it to not make us seen by others the way we’ve thought of others to be if they themselves live with this diagnosis. This is the worst symptom of stigma because it literally drives our behavior. A collection of thoughts turned to beliefs that don’t impact us automatically becomes the driving force of all our behaviors once we get a slip of paper that tells us this one of thousands of viruses we come in contact with in our lifetime has now chosen us as its host.
The fear of others seeing us as we once saw people with herpes is what we fear. We don’t want to tell people we have herpes so we get hung up on how to tell the story. We need to justify it so that we elicit some sympathy and maybe get what we want from them. So is it a little manipulation underneath our need to know who gave us herpes?
I share this as sort of a tough love for folks looking to find out who gave us herpes because maybe not knowing is the best thing for us and we can take this as we made a choice that could possibly have led to this outcome, we identify it, feel it, and use this as an avenue to heal through it so that we can not make this such a priority and live our life. There’s a lot of power in our choice and in our absence of choice. That power can be for you or it can be for them. Understand that the more we practice doing a thing, the better we get at it. Do you want to become a pro at blame, fear, giving people your power, or making empowering choices? You don’t NEED to know who gave you herpes for permission to be angry. You need to allow yourself to experience your emotions for the sake of allowing your power of choice to be exercised.
For additional support, you can contact me directly to support you through the emotions you may be experiencing with your own herpes diagnosis and navigating stigma by scheduling a 1-1 herpes support call.
