SPFPP 361: What Are The Herpes Transmission Rates?
In this episode, I tackle the questions everyone Googles but no one seems to find answers to: “What are the herpes transmission rates?” and “How do they impact relationships?” Spoiler alert: The numbers you’ll find online don’t tell the full story. Whether it’s female-to-male, male-to-female, or any other dynamic, the context of communication, consent, and compatibility is often missing from the equation.
Join me as I break down what these stats really mean, why they don’t give you the full picture, and how to focus on what actually matters—like having open, honest conversations and understanding your own boundaries. Let’s go beyond the surface and dive into how we can build stronger relationships, herpes or not. The full article described on Female to Male Herpes Transmission Rates can be found here.
Need Support?
If you’re navigating herpes stigma and want guidance on disclosure, relationships, or emotional health, explore resources like our 1-1 support calls, Yoga Therapy, and virtual events. Find everything you need to move forward at Something Positive for Positive People.
Episode 361 Episode 361 - Transcript
00:00:00
Courtney Brame: Hello. Welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brame. Um, if you're listening to this when it comes out, merry Christmas to you. Happy holidays, however, whatever it is that you celebrate. Um, welcome here. If you are somebody who's new and you just found this and uh I I welcome you. I welcome you to this space. I am your host, Courtney Bra. I've been hosting this podcast since 2017 and it's about to be 2025. That's eight years, y'all. I can't think of anything that I've done for eight years consistently. So, as we um wrap up the year 2024 going into 2025, I want to just offer something that I think is useful to people. Um, I've not talked about herpes transmission rates and for good reason because a lot of times when you look for that information online, you don't see accurate consistent information. Like depending on where you go, you may see one thing, you may see something else.
00:02:03
Courtney Brame: And the problem with that is if you tell someone, oh, the transmission rates are this number, and then they go do their own research and it turns out to be higher, for example, that person's probably not going to have a lot of trust in you and what it is that you have to say in regards to herpes transmission rate. So, um, I don't know if if you're listening to this, uh, and you're a longtime listener, you might have noticed that the website looks a little bit different. Um, if you're new here, I have a website, uh, Something Positive for Positive People. It's just spfpp.org. So um at the consulting of a friend of mine who has done a great job for uh Something Positive for Positive People working on things in the past. Uh, he presented me with some opportunities on search engine optimization for the website and we talked about being more visible, searchable um through blogging and I was resistant because I host this podcast. I talk to people.
00:03:12
Courtney Brame: I have real conversations. We talk about people's lived experiences, navigating herpes stigma, talking to health professionals. Why do I need to take the time to write out what I'm already talking about and saying, right? So, it just don't make sense to me, right? And I listened to him. I I made a blog post about this very topic. Um what are the female to male herpes transmission rates? Because this is a question that a lot of people are searching for apparently. And after writing it, it was very easy to rank at the top of search engines after uh I posted it. So, let me see. Let me… I'm going to type it in. What are the female to male herpes transmission rates? All right. So, I plug that in. First thing comes up is STD center NYC good RX very well world health organization let me go to page two where we where the hell am I there we go I'm right there on page two unfortunately but uh it's there so we're at the top of page two 1 2 3 4 5 six down ranking very instantly so I'm going to be doing more blogging answering these questions.
00:04:32
Courtney Brame: If you are somebody who's been on social media, you probably recognize that I've not been active on there lately. Unfortunately, um, social media is not showing me any love. I'll post something in regards to an upcoming workshop or something about herpes, statistics, an event, and nothing. Right. So, oh, also by the way, on the 27th of December, um, I'll be working with Plura to produce a herpes conversation, disclosure workshop, whatever it is. Like, we're going to come together and I'm just going to talk about the work of Something Positive for Positive People. Hopefully I get to answer some questions. Uh, I don't want to create a presentation and go in like here's what we're going to do from start to finish. I want this to be something engaging. Um, this is with Plura. Plura used to be called Bloom and it was like a sex positivity community space that also served as a dating site, but they have a lot of events that people would put on there virtual and in person.
00:05:34
Courtney Brame: But yeah, it exists. It's out there. Um if you go to the events tab on Something Positive for Positive People's website, you'll see it there. It's free, so you can register for that. Um, if you're on our newsletter, which is also ranking on the first page of Google now, um, thanks. Shout out to Corey, y'all. Shout out to Corey for that. And, um, yeah, the newsletter has the link to it, how you can register, and I'm trying to be consistent with just posting a newsletter per month. Um, I'm going to have to find a way to incorporate that more into uh the marketing and just sharing what's happening because we do have events. We have events. We have workshops and at the expense of not wanting to be annoying and send more than what I said I was going to send or trying to accommodate for people that I don't really hear from but I think I have an idea.
00:06:31
Courtney Brame: Like it's a lot there. Um, and I keep doing that and I don't want to keep doing that at the expense of progress forward. So, we have a newsletter you can join and we have that event that's coming up. Go to the events tab on the website. Um, also the survey. So, the survey is up if you go to spfpp.org/herpes-survey I believe. Let me triple check that real quick. Um but yeah, you can take our survey. Uh it's a very long one. Yeah, it's slash herpes survey. Um… it's long. The description is there. But we want to take this information. I want to use this to present at the next upcoming Something Positive for Positive People herpes conference. Um this will be another virtual one. It's going to be May 22nd this year celebrating the sixth year of Something Positive for Positive People as a nonprofit. Um, and I'll be presenting probably that data, but also uh I've been feeling compelled to speak about the spiritual significance of herpes.
00:07:36
Courtney Brame: So, I might go ahead and put something together for that and implement some of what I've been learning working with people um via yoga therapy as well. So, be on the lookout for that if that's something that you're interested in. I'll have Dr. Evelyn Dhacker speak at the conference perhaps on the somatics piece of uh herpes and herpes stigma managing it um the symptoms as well as the uh stigma component of it and the mental health aspects but uh going back to the transmission rates I want to make sure to give y'all what I said I would uh people really don't care and that's what I've been saying for years now is I'm learning that what really it comes down to is does this person like you more than they don't want to get herpes? And when we look at it like that, when we think about it in that way, I think that it eliminates a lot of the um the the overanalytics of it and the over complicating and overthinking like what could be a reason that this person is not wanting to move forward with us or they don't want to do uh they don't want to have a relationship.
00:08:51
Courtney Brame: There's a number of reasons that, you know, unfortunately, we may never know. People might not tell us, but at the end of the day, right, like we can't try and convince people that we're worth having sex with or that we're worth the quote risk of getting something. Um, we just can't. It's not realistic for us to dehumanize ourselves and objectify ourselves in such a way that we diminish our value exclusively to our sexuality. If that's something that you've led with in the past, then maybe this is an opportunity to look at that like what does that mean? Why do you lead with your sexuality? Unless leading with your sexuality is getting what you want. Um but in that case, like I don't know that herpes… uh, the statistics, are something that would be relevant there. So, I did some research and just to kind of speak to some of those statistics, I gave it something um I I I did look through a couple of the resources that were shared and just like I said, like everyone does say something a little bit different.
00:10:03
Courtney Brame: So, when I looked at the female to male herpes transmission rates, as I sit here now and I'm looking at, you know what? I'm going to just click the Google link. All right. Now, Good RX says that the transmission rate from female to male is less than 10%. The Today Show, so the Today Show website shows that women's risk of being infected by men is 20%. And the more we look at these statistics, like what does that mean? Ten. It's a 10% chance you'll get herpes from me or that someone who's having sex with a woman would get herpes from them. But the reality is after especially understanding the differences of the herpes and that means of transmission. Uh I didn't even notice I had a typo in this y'all. Hold on. I got to fix that while I'm here. I put uh the difference between HSV1 ‘send’ HSV2 instead of and so let me go ahead and correct that because again people don't like… people don't correct me or tell me when I'm wrong or when there's a typo in things and I think people just like don't want to hurt my feelings which that's cool but I I need to do the things like well right like I'm not about being perfect but I want to be like… I want to
00:11:31
Courtney Brame: have it done. Um, so I referenced the different resources and how to disclose and really what the truth is about this is that the people who are looking at or who would like to know what the herpes transmission rates are, these are the kinds of people who want to know what they can do to make the risk zero. The question that they're really asking is, "How do I have sex with you without the potential repercussions?" Because they don't want to go on to have this conversation. It's a very vulnerable conversation. If you're someone who's been disclosing your herpes status, you know how vulnerable it is. You know how emotionally draining it can be to think about it, to find somebody and look for those red flags of whether or not you should tell them. Go back and forth on, well, you know, maybe I could tell them, maybe I couldn't tell them. and then all of the different possible outcomes from whether you make this choice or make that choice.
00:12:30
Courtney Brame: And as someone who has been there before, the only thing that I can say is that when we remove the need to try and explain to someone, hey, well, here's what the odds are, right? We have the conversation differently and we're not giving anyone false hope. We're not allowing room for there to be someone who says, "Oh, okay. Well, I'm okay, you know, with me… I'm okay with that number." Because people are okay with the number, right? Like, it only takes one time. But there are people who can have sex several times and not get herpes, right? And so, if they took action at 1% thinking they're not going to get it, and then they get it, what does that mean for the relationship now? How does that feel for you? you know, being a person who's having sex with someone who actually wasn't okay with it and they use that number as a means of comfort to move forward with you sexually, right?
00:13:32
Courtney Brame: So, just something to think about if we don't have to lead with transmission rates and also the female to male thing is not relevant. The virus is spread by skin-to-skin contact. Some of the factors that we can look into is there an outbreak? The frequency of outbreaks, how much time has passed since your previous outbreak? Are you about to have an outbreak? What's your stress level like? What's the other person's uh physical health? And how's their mental health? Um, do they know what their status is? Are you using barriers? These are the factors that play a role in that. And I think one of the places that we're really missing the mark is in STI prevention when we talk about condom use, right? So when we speak about condoms, we think about putting a latex rubbery item over an erect penis. That's not the only way that people are having sex.
00:14:22
Courtney Brame: So when we talk about herpes transmission rates and skin-to-skin contact, what we're talking about is oral to genital with or without barriers, genital to genital with or without barriers, but ultimately skin-to-skin contact occurring with or without barriers. So think about it that way. where if there is a shedding of the virus that's where it is it's happening there right so I encourage people to just take that into consideration right like in in the article that I wrote like that was just very much for SEO um to help with Something Positive for Positive People's rankings I I see that this will probably be something that climbs um especially after I post this podcast episode but that's just something to consider the male to female doesn't make a difference. Really, what it's about is the skin-to-skin contact. Is that skin-to-skin contact happening around the time of an outbreak? Is it uh barriered or not barriered? And then we get into looking at all these different transmission rates, right? Uh from that lens.
00:15:56
Courtney Brame: And again, as the person who maybe if you're listening to this and you don't have herpes, let's say you find this because you want to know about the transmission rates, right? If you don't have herpes, um there's nothing that we can do or say to prevent you from getting it. But I will say this, looking at a previous survey that I've done and here I'll type it in here so I can look at the exact um number for you to find. Let me see spf.org/data. So you're able to look this up yourself and you'll see the herpes statistics. So, I'm scrolling now and I'm looking for the um disclosure. I think it might be herpes disclosure where it's going to show me the number of people who have not passed herpes on to a partner. Where's the old one? Hold on, y'all. I'm sorry. I could probably pause this and just look for it, but it's really important to me that I see where we go.
00:17:04
Courtney Brame: Here we go. So, all right. 81%. No, no, no, that's not it. Damn. Where is it at? Oh, I don't think it's on here, y'all. No. So, this was actually an old uh survey that I did from 2021. And this whole time I thought that this was on the website, but it's not. So, the statistic was that more than 70% of people who have had sex with a person who doesn't have herpes have not passed it on to another person. Now, to me, that is way more useful information than what the uh transmission rates are. So, if you tell me I can reduce the risk down to 3% if I wear a condom and someone's on antivirals, then there's only a 3% chance. Now, what does that mean? 3% means three out of 100. Three per century. That's what percent is, right? I guess I'm guessing that. But if I stroke a 100 times, it only takes three of those for me to get it.
00:18:13
Courtney Brame: So, if I don't get it within the first 97, am I going to just stop? Like, am I going to stop stroking to bring that 3% down to a subjective 0%. Right? Uh, does that mean three out of every 100 times we have sex and make skin contact with the affected area? Does that mean I'm gonna test positive? We don't know. We don't, we really don't. But for me to see that out of a thousand something people who've taken this survey, 1100 people see that 70 plus% of people who've had sex with someone who doesn't have herpes have not passed it to them. That's really more useful information. And um this is something that would have been really useful to reference here, but we have this question in our 2025 survey. So um if you go in and you take that uh it would be really helpful for us to get your information if you are someone who's living with herpes.
00:19:16
Courtney Brame: All right, so it's on the website the survey tab. Um, I would love to get as many responses as I can so that we can make this into something that we can get researched because we have all this information and we don't have any useful information, right? I don't care how many people have herpes. When people are diagnosed, they don't care how many people have herpes. They want to know what it means for them because they don't know any of these people, right? So to hear, oh, herpes is so common, that don't do nothing for people. And we got to be real. But we got to be real about the fact that we do need support resources. And I'm doing my best to get that out into the world where it starts in the medical settings. In February, I'm going to bring a team of people to Phoenix, Arizona. Shout out to Affirm A because we're going to do our first simulation there uh where we're going to practice uh having providers take a sexual history and deliver a herpes diagnosis or to do some consulting with a patient who does have herpes.
00:20:18
Courtney Brame: And I can't tell you how excited I am for this because this is the offering that we have for clinics. I was able to get $10,000 in funding in order to bring this to life. Um, I'm paying some sex educators to come and be patient actors under this program. We were able to get a place. We were able to get people on board with uh allowing us to run this simulation. I got a photographer/videographer who's going to help me make commercials out of it, y'all. And hey, Something Positive for Positive People is moving. It's moving, y'all. And so that's my way of this is a program uh to engage health care professionals and give them this resource and have them see Something Positive for Positive People as a credible resource uh for people who are living with and or struggling with herpes and stigma. So, uh, yeah, when y'all like get involved, when y'all donate, when y'all are supportive and y'all share this content, it's not just like helping me personally.
00:21:21
Courtney Brame: Uh, well, now I mean, it would be more. Um, I did damn so many announcements to make and I just keep sporadically dropping them in the uh thing. But my board approved for me to be able to pay myself for 2025 uh 90% of what comes in because reasonably I am running all of the programs. I host the workshops. I do the conferences, the talking, the event planning and coordination. I’m the yoga therapist. I do the podcast. So, it didn't make sense before for me to have 35% of the money go to Something Positive for Positive People and only 65 to me when a lot of the time was really just using the money to do things that needed to be done. I would have to put money back into it… it was ridiculous, right? So, to travel to conferences for instance, right? I would get paid sometimes, but it's often not enough. And I can just be transparent about that.
00:22:17
Courtney Brame: Um to fly to a place and get the opportunity, right? The opportunity often turns into other opportunities, but um not always. So yeah, now I'm able to pay myself um 90% of what comes in and keep what services I'm providing. So the peer support calls as well as the um the peer support calls and the other thing. What's the other thing? Oh, the yoga therapy. Wow. How'd I forget that? Uh, these are things that I keep 100% of. So, random donations just come in. You know, if someone gives $100, 10% of that stays with the organization, 90% goes to Courtney, so that Courtney can continue to have a life and perhaps not have to work all these other side gigs and part-time jobs. Even though I like one of the ones that I do, which is educating medical students, because that does tie in to this. Um, but yeah, I got to tell y'all, I never saw myself doing this work, but the way that it is evolving, I feel much more like cleancut.
00:23:19
Courtney Brame: I feel very much more organized. I had to hire an accounting firm this year. I got to use QuickBooks. And uh this is because we’ll see it in probably a week, the final bank statement of the year. But I think that we hit like $95,000 in donations and grants and funding. And we only getting started, y'all. And this was with me distracted. I was moving. I moved twice. I moved to New Jersey to get closer to New York. And now, um I'm still in New Jersey, but I moved in with my girlfriend. Um, I got rid of my place. I was able to find somebody to sublease. And today actually, or yesterday, I'm sorry. Yesterday, um, I got everything out of my apartment. I turned the keys in. I texted the landlord and was like, "Hey, you know, everything's out. Place is clean." So,
00:24:08
Courtney Brame: now me and her are sharing the space. And I'm a little bit nervous. I'm excited. Uh, I'm saving money. And next, I'm working towards the relationship. I mentioned on the last episode, you know, that transition from talking about dating with herpes to speaking about having relationships and living with herpes. Um, there's actually some people that I am just now thinking of who I can have these conversations with. So, I'll be bringing them on a podcast uh to also just help people see that, right? Like we talk about the struggles with dating with herpes, but dating in itself is a challenge for reasons that fall outside of um where my area of experience is, but it comes up when we talk about how unavailable people are. Even like me, like I can speak to myself as an example of just how unavailable I've been uh and masking that as availability, right? So yeah, I foresee a lot of these conversations coming up moving forward.
00:25:12
Courtney Brame: Um I wanted to just give you all something useful rather than just coming on here making an announcement of what's to come. As you can tell, Tuesday's show has not happened. Uh nobody wants don't nobody want to let me interview them live and about herpes. So uh I tried and I'm sorry. I did try. It would be really cool to have this be a show. I really enjoy the conversations that I have with people. I enjoy the epiphanies you see in people's faces. But I guess I just got to get that fixed now uh through yoga therapy. If you are someone who's interested in yoga therapy, maybe you don't know what that consists of. Um I I I don't like to say it's like therapy because it is different. It does complement therapy very well, but there's a much more somatic integration here. I look at people from an element's lens, right? Earth, fire, uh, air, ether, and water.
00:26:13
Courtney Brame: And we look at what nature has to say about each of these elements. And what yoga therapy does is through movement, breath, stillness, meditation, and journaling, we're able to identify these imbalances of our own inner natures and the elements within us, and we restore that balance. and I use that specifically for herpes stigma, but people have come in and we've talked about things that they didn't expect to talk about. Um, there's a client I'm waiting to hear back from who was like, I need help being more vulnerable. We had a couple conversations and she missed an appointment and I have very firm boundaries around that. So, maybe I turned her off because I was like, "Hey, here's how things got to go." But for the clients that I have been working with, uh one came in just wanting more movement. And now we're talking about her relationship to her environment and space and her relationship to the element of fire that is about passion about, you know, what you like, right?
00:27:10
Courtney Brame: Like intensity, what do you… what are you thrilled about? Right? Um, another client we were able to create a relationship mission statement because she just wanted to know how to live with herpes and how to get into and date u get into relationships and dating uh looking at what's happened in the past for her. And we use Dr. Evelin Dacker’s STARS framework and incorporated that into helping her identify the kinds of relationships that she wants whether short-term or long-term but being able to differentiate between who to ask for what from and talking about for her as well, like vulnerability. Um and the case studies are something that they've consented to me being able to speak about. Uh, another client that I've been working with, she's someone who has spoken about not having the best relationships in the past and how being in a healthy relationship now has been so different and it it's going to require some healthy changes in order to be able to maintain and sustain that and branch out into that healthy relationship energy dynamic and being able to extend that into other parts of life with family, with friends.
00:28:22
Courtney Brame: So, I never saw myself. People always say, "Courtney, you should be a therapist. You should be a therapist." And I've been so resistant to ever going back to school to learn to be a therapist. And yoga therapy literally just presented itself. Uh, shout out to Innerpiece Yoga Therapy for making it affordable and accessible to somebody like me. Like, I just graduated from my introductory 300 hour training. Yay. I'm so happy. But now I have 500 hours to go. So, I'm in mentorship. Um, I'm a practicing yoga therapist in training. If you are someone who wants to work with me, all the rates are on the website. The original like standard pricing is $150 a week. And with that comes three 45 minute sessions. I got to get to know you in different capacities to start out. And then from there, we have short uh longer in less frequent sessions.
00:29:16
Courtney Brame: And like I said, we incorporate movement, breathing, and meditation into it. It's a tax deductible write off for you because you're paying it as a donation to Something Positive for Positive People. Um, and I looked up the legalities of it. So, I'm good because uh the work directly ties into the mission statement of supporting people who are living with herpes. And um yeah, I'm really finding my groove with this. So yeah, if herpes stigma is something that might be a challenge for you and if you want to work with me more in a more uh expansive capacity outside of just that 30 minute one-on-one peerup support call, please reach out to me spf.org/yoga- therapy. All right, so this uh concludes our Christmas episode. I talked a little bit more about myself than I plan to and I guess that's just part of the… like, I need to because I've not done a podcast episode in a while. Like I said, I've been busy moving.
00:30:21
Courtney Brame: Moving is a challenge. I've also been working. Um I'm going to be speaking about gender sexuality. Oh my god, I don't have it. NYSAIS, it's a long acronym, but I'm going to be presenting there in January. um on talking about STIs to youth. So, this is going to be very different for me, outside my comfort zone. I'll be presenting it with my co-facilitator, Dakota Rampen. We've worked together and done things with Planned Parenthood before, and I'm looking forward to being able to get this popping in January. We also are going to be putting together some… I don't want to call them courses, but just like some workshops on things like boundaries and dealing with rejection and tying it into a herpes diagnosis because this is really useful information to have. Um, so I hope that if you can't make the event Friday virtually on the herpes stigma and everything workshop, uh, the recording will be made available. So even if you aren't able to attend live, please register so that you can get that recording. Um, I'm really looking forward to it. It's something that's easy to have and host and I get to just be me. I get to just have a conversation, y'all. That's what Courtney going to be doing.
