SPFPP Episode 148: Dating for Convenience

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.

Episode 148 Transcript

A Listener's Story: Deception, Gaslighting, and an HSV-1 Diagnosis

00:00:00 Courtney Brame: Before I get started on the topic of dating inconvenience, which I had to say right now because oh my god, there's going to be trucks driving by and everything throughout this podcast episode. There's construction outside and I'm doing this at a time where they're doing construction outside. bear with me through the noises that you might hear periodically. I think that I'll talk loud enough to drown it out for the most part. But the topic of this episode is going to be dating and convenience and of course we're going to throw herpes in there and how that impacts things. But first I want to read a story that someone wrote in.

Courtney Brame: So during this pandemic, it's been a little bit challenging to get guests- meet… meeting with people in person, of course. And that's the direction that I want to go with this. Just due to the technical difficulties and just being in front of a person's a lot more of a different feel to it than doing it over Zoom or doing it over Facebook Messenger how I have before. And I'm also not working with the same equipment that I had as I mentioned in just about every other episode. So, I'm going to go ahead and get started with someone who wrote in. I'm going to read their story. It's a pretty long one here: So, I had gotten out of an emotionally abusive relationship and was talking to a guy that I had known in high school. At the time, I was telling him about my relationship. He was super sweet and supportive and I felt very safe with him. We started hooking up and he sometimes would tell me, "I want to have no kiss sex." I asked him why and he told me, "It's more exciting if we don't kiss."

Courtney Brame: and I was 21 and stupid, so I went along with it. The morning of my 22nd birthday, I woke up with an outbreak all over my genitals and this deep, stinging pain in the backs of my thighs. I went into my best friend's room, who I lived with at the time, and asked her if I could show her something. She looked at it and ended up googling and figured out that it was probably herpes. I immediately texted the guy as I had sex with him two days prior and asked him if he had anything.

Courtney Brame: He said, 'What do you mean? And I explained STDs, anything like that. He said no and asked me why. I told him, ' something isn't right. Something is going on. And he just kind of ghosted after that. I tried to make a doctor's appointment for the next day, but since it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, my doctor's office was closed. I made an appointment for the Monday after Thanksgiving and just tried to make the best of my birthday and Thanksgiving weekend. Wait, maybe not What's the one right after Scorpio? can't remember cuz that's the only one that matters. I'm just kidding. I had such bad anxiety and the pain in my thighs just wouldn't go away that I continually popped Tylenol almost every two to four hours just to help with the pain in the backs of my thighs. I was so paranoid during dinner that I wouldn't let anyone share my drinks.

Courtney Brame: I was just scared of everything or possibly giving it to anyone. Even though it was on my genitals and not my lips, I assumed I could still pass it through my lips. On Monday morning, my best friend drove me to the doctor's office. My doctor took one look and said, "Yep, that looks like herpes." She did a swab test and then sent me down the hall. After getting my blood drawn, I went back to the exam room and just broke down into tears. My doctor popped her head in, saw me crying, and said, "I called in a prescription for you. You can go home now."

Courtney Brame: So, I left still crying. On the drive home, I immediately called the guy and told him the news. He told me, "Yeah, I've had herpes since I was eight. I got it from another kid at school. My doctor said It shouldn't be contagious, though." And we had no kiss sex, so I don't know how you got it. I have never given it to another girl before- I yelled at him. We had no kiss sex, but you used spit as lube, you idiot… and hung up. I was still on my parents health insurance at the time and had to go tell my mom so she would buy the pills for me at the pharmacy. After telling her, the first thing she said to me was, "That's what you get for having sex without a condom." She didn't really believe me when I told her how I got it. A few days after the blood results came and my doctor called and told me I had herpes simplex type 1. I really thought I was ruined. No one would love me ever again.

Courtney Brame: No one would want to have sex with me if I told them. I thought about not telling them, but then I would just be as bad as the guy who gave it to me. So, that wasn't happening. I spent a good month moping about it, but reached out to some people that I knew had it, talked to them, and started seeing someone from my college before anything happened. I told him, "I have to tell you something before we do anything. I have herpes. I don't have an outbreak right now, and I've talked to my doctor. I'm not contagious unless I'm having an outbreak, but I want to let you know and if you don't want to have sex with me, I understand. He told me he didn’t care. We didn't date for long after that, though. I had the same conversation two more times after that with two separate guys, including my current boyfriend. Neither of them cared either. I have been with my current boyfriend for almost three years. If I feel like I'm about to have an outbreak or do have one, we don't do anything during that time.

Medical Accountability and the Cycle of Stigma

00:05:00 Courtney Brame: I haven't had an outbreak really since the first one to the point where I haven't had to take those awful pills. I have had to stop and think this feels like an outbreak. But I haven't had any scares in a year. I did find out that the guy I got it from was using me as a side piece and he had a girlfriend the whole time and several other hookups. I've always been wary and never reached out to those girls to tell them. Although his ex-girlfriend and I did have an extensive conversation about it and she was going to reach out to some people and warn them. I'm over the stigma enough on my end. Everyone in my life at this point knows friends, family, and I don't hesitate to share it.

Courtney Brame: If I overhear someone being shameful about the stigma. I've had to educate several friends about it. I'm trying to figure out how to end this email. I can't figure out a good way, but I'm happy. Things are good and thank you for letting me share.” And then this last point's irrelevant cuz they're just telling me not to share their name. So I thank you for sharing your experience and your story. Not too much really to dive into here, especially since you really brought it back full circle and just saying that, you don't want to end up like that guy who gave you herpes, knew he had it, and just didn't tell you. This is a very common thing where people have herpes, and they just don't say that they have herpes.

Courtney Brame: And I don't think there's enough accountability being put onto the medical field because when people deliver a diagnosis to us like that diagnosis delivery is part of STD prevention and the prevention efforts come to essentially a halt or standstill at that point when you tell someone just get out of my office or here you go and you don't really give them next steps to move forward. I think that there can be a little bit of time that's extended to the patient especially in that space and if you don't have time then point them to the resources that are necessary in order to help them move forward and I use my own testimony as an example I had to get treated for chlamydia twice because no one wanted to even tell me that I might have an STD right so with that being said there's so many angles for this to

Courtney Brame: be touched… One of which is that there are people who won't disclose and I got herpes when I was eight. For you to have known that all this time from 8 years old at this point what 18, 19, 20 and not share that information. If you get oral herpes and you're having sex, even if you're not kissing, then the skin contact from other areas of the body, you can't tell me no one's going down on the other person here. That's enough to pass/transmit the virus, right? And so it's a matter of taking responsibility there. If you are the person who's choosing not to disclose and you think that, I just have it orally, so if I don't kiss, then I won't pass it on. Herpes is transmitted from skin contact. That's one thing that we know for sure, right? Is that it is passed on from skin to skin contact.

Courtney Brame: We know that condoms do not cover the entire affected area. And for the people who are diagnosed and they go to get support from someone that should be a trustworthy source like a parent or family member or close friend and are immediately met with that ignorance of you should have used a condom. No, that's not how you 100% protect yourself from contracting herpes. It just doesn't work like that. Because realistically, what they could say that would be honest is you shouldn't have had sex with somebody with herpes. That's a more reasonable statement to make, but then we get to the point of “How do I know? if they don't tell me, there's nothing I can do about it.”

Courtney Brame: So, anyone who's met with that kind of statement, that ignorance, that shaming, please know that this is 100% just as a result of people's un unwillingness, mis-education about this virus. As we know, this is a tricky virus. It's a talented virus. The way that it moves, it operates, the way that it sheds and passes itself on to others, all of these things contribute to that. And I'm a firm believer at this point. There's no science to support this, but I think that the more shameful and ashamed of it you are, the more contagious you can be. So if you're the kind of person who is hiding this and you're doing everything you're taking your medications, you're wearing condoms, and you're being really afraid to have sex with someone, but you're having sex with someone.

The Privilege of Non-Disclosure and Honest Communication

00:10:00 Courtney Brame: You're afraid of passing this on to them because you don't want to tell them whatever. I think that those are the kinds of instances where this really does pass on. Those are the conditions that herpes needs in order for it to survive, thrive, and spread and reproduce, right? Cuz one of the links is being stressed, being depressed. One of the first things that I read was that you want to manage your stress. And so if you're stressing about when am I going to tell this person, how am I going to tell this person? Or I better make sure we use condoms. I have to make sure that he keeps the condom on so that she doesn't pull the condom off or however these things are or I have to make sure that I take my medication this many days out before I know I'm going to have sex or see this person. And all it takes from that point is just the skin contact to happen. So there's a possibility that you're going to pass herpes on to someone.

Courtney Brame: So one of the best things that you can do is put yourself in the best position that you can in order to minimize the risk. Taking medication, wearing condoms, these are two things that you can do. But the hardest part of this is just the communication piece. For some people, disclosure comes really easy. For others, not so much. And then for, I'm not leaving out the people who are at risk of facing violence or anyone who's in domestic abuse situations. It's more challenging for them, right?

Courtney Brame: And so for people who have the privilege of just not disclosing because they don't want to or because they don't want to be rejected or because they don't want to be embarrassed, please acknowledge that privilege and recognize that and look at on the other end of the effects that has on people that You will never meet these people. You will never know what they're going through. You'll never know how they're going to be treated by the people around them. And you don't know what their situations are.

Courtney Brame: and to have found out that from the listener who wrote in for them to have gotten herpes and then found out that they weren't the only person like this is one of several potential stories and outcomes and the person who wrote in decided no I'm going to disclose so what about the other let's say five people given that one in six people have herpes so assuming that he's been sleeping with particularly five other people that he's not telling. One of those other six people could not respond the same way that our person who wrote in responded, which is “I'm going to disclose. I'm not going to be like him.” One of those people could be like, what, he did it to me, so I'm going to do it to somebody else. And then bam, you've got one of these statistics that are happening, right? So it's an entire cycle.

Courtney Brame: And the minute that we can begin to get to a place where it's like, all right, I'm gonna not necessarily take this moral high ground, but just Be honest with your partners and take responsibility for it shouldn't be solely on us as the people who are positive to have and initiate the conversation. Unfortunately, that's just how the cookie crumbled here. We're the ones who are expected to disclose if we have a positive status whereas the majority of the world you would assume doesn't have any STI. So it almost goes unspoken to that part of the sexually active world that if I don't have anything I'm assuming that if someone had an STD they wouldn't have sex, right? Cuz that's where I was. I assumed that having an STD was painful.

Courtney Brame: It hurts. Who's going to want to have sex if they have an STD? Disclosure wasn't an issue for me. It was more like, people aren't going to want to do that and be in pain. But here I am, and even the places that I thought that I contracted it from, all of those people said no, they didn't have it. So I can say 8 years into my diagnosis, I have no idea how I got herpes or who I got herpes from, even though I've taken the precautions that I was supposed to have taken, right?

00:15:00 Courtney Brame: So, here we are at this point in time and the disclosure is always going to be one of the main topics of discussion because when someone's diagnosed, this is kind of one of the first things that they're concerned about is When do I have to tell people? Is there a way for me to get around having to tell people? And the honest answer is yes, you have to tell people.

Courtney Brame: I mean you can do whatever you want to do but at the end of it all like I said I believe that the more transparent we are able to be then the less sticky the less what's the word there's probably a better word for this but the less the more transparent we can be holy and holy with a w not h o l y then it's almost kind of like the transmission aspect of herpes sort of becomes transparent as well and doesn't stick to the other person. It's when we're holding on to that stress and anxiety around passing it on that it more likely passes on to a person. And that's what's happened with me. I've taken the precautions necessary with my partners who do and don't have herpes.

Courtney Brame: With those who do have herpes has been a little bit of a different precautionary thing and conversation which is also something that I want to touch on as we finish this up here about the email. But yeah, I want to challenge people to hold the medical community accountable, So if you do have herpes and you're at a place now where you're comfortable when you go to the doctor and you talk about sex and make them uncomfortable because you had to be unco It's very uncomfortable when you go in for your diagnosis and you're met with such coldness or you're met with such discomfort because oftentimes they'll project onto you how they're feeling.

Courtney Brame: And at this point, if you have herpes and you listen to this podcast, enough about this virus to be able to speak to it and say, " challenge them and ask them, what can I do? How do I have sex? Do I have to disclose?" Ask them these questions. And then when they give you some**, call them out on it. What are they going to do? Not write you a prescription? They're going to not do their jobs? No. So, let's start doing that. Let's start holding the medical community accountable because this is where it starts with that diagnosis and how people receive their diagnosis often dictates whether or not they choose to disclose and how they go about seeking more information as they move forward. So all that said, thank you for writing in. I'm very sorry that that has been your experience. I am so happy to hear that you are now at a place where things are good and you're happy. So I appreciate that.

Therapy Services and the Trap of "Convenient" Dating

Courtney Brame: to get into the subject of what I wanted to talk about has just been s*** basically my therapy sessions. We're at a place now where 10 people are enrolled in therapy. We got 12 sessions for 10 different people. for all of your donations. Thank you for sharing the resources from the H on my chest Instagram page and from something positive for positive All the people who've interviewed me and allowed me to come on and talk about this process and speak this into existence and get to the place where it is now. We're three and a half years in from the time that this originated as a podcast. And I think maybe six months in, I was like, man, I really should try and get therapy for people who are struggling with herpes.

Courtney Brame: And nothing against coaches or anything but this kind of healing that takes place is a huge necessity for people. If you're someone who happens to be able to afford coaching then perhaps looking into a therapist or counseling service is also something that you may benefit from as so I'm not really sure exactly what the coaches do. I'm aware that they just kind of challenge you or keep you accountable. These are accountability things. But speaking from my own experience in therapy, what I'm finding is that my therapist challenges me to challenge myself more than anything else. And as I connect with the people who are also enrolled in therapy through something positive for positive people, one of the common things is that they're surprised.

Courtney Brame: These are people who have experience with not just, their own life experience, but also with others, and they're able to view this from a professional lens and be able to say things like, "Okay, this sounds like depression. It sounds like blah blah blah." And you're able to ask them the questions that they can revert back to their schooling, their education, and be able to support you through in that way, right? So, one thing that came up was Dating for convenience might be the topic of the title of this podcast episode. How convenient is it to date someone with herpes? We talk about the dating sites and options that are out there for us as people who are living with HSV. And I want to get more into the habit of saying HSV over herpes as well because HSV people are like what's that? And then you can go into more detail about it.

00:20:00 Courtney Brame: You say herpes and you're instantly met with this barrier of resistance given whatever bit of knowledge the other person has about this virus. Right? So, given that we're V, we've tested positive for HSV, whatever way you want to spin it, it's easy to want to just connect with people based on the fact that they also have herpes, One of the most common thing things that I find with people is that we're so quick to jump into dating or relationships out of the convenience of not having to worry ourselves with herpes when having herpes often has much to teach us.

Resentment is Gunpowder: The Importance of Boundaries

Courtney Brame: and we completely put it off and avoid it by either dating only exclusively within our community or the first person who accepts us as we are right and by default I wanted to say there's nothing wrong with that but when it's unconscious when you are so unwilling to look at your diagnosis and what that represents I think that you often will find yourself in a situation where you're looking up and it's like damn I don't even want to be with this***. you just look up and you can't stand the person that you're looking at. And all this resentment that's been building over however much time because it's easy. It' That s* explodes. And I'll use myself as an example, not just with herpes, but in other ways that I can tie into my diagnosis. So, I impulsively quit my job and moved back home to St. Louis. It's been almost four years, right?

Courtney Brame: Resentment had been building for the two years that I was at this company of things happening and I just wouldn't say anything. I just kind of dismissed it, swept it under the rug, avoided it. But literally that resentment was gunpowder and I just kept storing gunpowder, and all it took was a spark for that s* to explode. And when it exploded, it looked like, "f*** y'all. I'm out of here." I didn't say it that way, but it was just more of like a big two middle fingers and then walked out.

Courtney Brame: I left. Another example, a relationship that I ended. It had been and this was me not talking about it. I wasn't expressing my feelings. I wasn't saying, "Hey, when you do this thing, it makes me feel this way." And I wasn't at a place where I could communicate things very well. I just knew that something was wrong. And it was like, "No, I'm tripping." don't dismiss yourself with I'm tripping or they tripping. Don't do that because what's going to end up happening is you're gonna come home one day and you're gonna look at that person and they're not going to be doing what you've expected of them and then you're kicking them out and sending them back home. And now you are willing to deal with whatever it is that you got to deal with as a result of the consequences, but you're not thinking about that at that time. You just erupt in an explosion, right?

Courtney Brame: So bam, there's another situation where you find yourself in situations that you're not managing expectations. Let me say that when you're not managing the expectations well because at work I could have been like, "Hey, I'm being told. Here's what I'm doing. Where's the disconnect here?" And being able to have that kind of conversation. And if you find yourself in a situation where you're unable to have that kind of conversation, it's unhealthy because we need to be able to articulate our boundaries. We need to be able to have ongoing communication in all areas of our life, whether it be friendships, family, relationships, passions, career, volunteering, even, wherever it is that you're sharing space with other people.

Courtney Brame: Boundaries need to be articulated and ongoing communication has to be something that is valued and prioritized. Otherwise, it won't work out. Otherwise, we find ourselves trying to honor the expectations of another person that we think they have rather than being able to bring it out into reality from us, and then meet here in front of one another and decide, okay, here's what I'm hearing. Here's what I'm seeing. I use this analogy to imagine you're standing across from a person and you draw the number six on the ground and you tell them, "Hey, this is a six." That person looks down and they go, "No, it's not. It's a nine." "No, I just drew a six. Why are you telling me? How you telling me what I drew? f*** you." No. And then it turns confrontational. There has to be a willingness. And what boundaries to me look like and communicating that is like, "Hey, I took the time. I put this six down here and you're telling me that you see a nine." Like what?

00:25:00 Courtney Brame: How is that? And then they're able to explain, here's where the curves come in to make this look like what I'm seeing as a nine. it's the curvature from your angle. And then you're able to shift positions enough to see, yeah, you drew a six and it looks like a nine to me. Let me switch sides with you. And now we're able to see from the other person's perspective, Bam. This is the kind of stuff that has to happen. And it is inconvenient as f*** because it's not easy. It's not something that we can just suddenly just wake up to being able to do. It's a process and it's a challenging process and it's something that's going to require ongoing communication. And you're going to have to challenge yourself.

Courtney Brame: You're going to be challenged by the universe around us like making sure that this is what we want because we're constantly being tested to live up to be the person that we claim to want to be. And if we're unwilling to do that, then when those challenges come into our space, we're going to continue to fail. We're going to continue to fall into the exact same patterns that we always have. And the only way to really get out of those patterns is to once you find yourself in that situation again, you have to change the behavior could look like, all right, I constantly find myself in a job where I'm being asked to do something and then I do it and it's not being done the way that the person wanted. Right?

Courtney Brame: So, here's where things come in. asking questions "Okay, when you ask me to do things and then I give them to you and they're not what it looks like, it makes me honestly not want to do work for you. It makes me not want to work for you anymore."'t my it's your s*** because of your lack of communication. Or perhaps I'm just** up and doing something wrong. So, boundaries on both ends just look like having a hard conversation and being like, "Hey, here's what I'm asking for in more detail. If you can't deliver this, then I need to ask somebody else to do it. Or if I can't deliver this, then maybe you need to ask somebody else to do it, In relationships, supportive of What do I need? How can you be supportive of me? And that's what I'm learning, that boundaries are 100% teaching people how they can love and respect you.

"Lowercase Courtney" and the Cost of People-Pleasing

Courtney Brame: and you're able to figure out how to love and respect another person just by honoring their boundaries. I feel like I'm drifting away from the point that I was trying to make, but in therapy, one of the things that came up, we mentioned lowercase Courtney in two episodes ago, I believe, and Lowercase Courtney showed up in sports. one of my first football games. Now, I've always been a pretty big dude for my age group, let's say. So, I played what was it? Tight end in football when I was in seventh grade. And I remember very vividly the coach- it wasn't coach Morris, it was another one of the coaches, I can't remember his name, but my coach yelled from the sideline, we've been playing for a while and he yelled, "Bra, hit somebody." And I was just like, we in the game. I'm not getting a pass thrown to me."

Courtney Brame: And I'm blocking for the most part. So, I'm either blocking for the run play or I'm running out to get a pass thrown to me. And at that age, nine times out of 10, you running the ball. So, we pass this play. I run my route or I block. I forget which one it was, but whoever had the ball thrown to them, they're running and they're definitely about to score a touchdown. Me being told hit somebody. I'm chasing down people in the opposite color jerseys and I'm just** them up like pushing them in the back. I think I might have pushed four or five people cuz I remember three different refs threw flags at least. But I did what I was told. I hit somebody and once the whistle blew and the play was over, there was however many yards of a penalty that added up to, especially in seventh grade. And I don't think any of the referees seen anything like that before, but I hit people.

Courtney Brame: I hit people just like I was asked to. I get ejected from the** game because apparently there's this thing called clipping where you're not allowed to hit people in the back. So, here is a perfect example of that lowercase version of myself who's doing who that resentment just kind of exploded right there. And if you can look at this from seventh grade and take it back to me exploding on my then girlfriend kicking her out or me exploding internally at work and then just quitting my job, this was what we covered in therapy about I'm trying to tie together multiple things. So I'm getting stuck with the storytelling piece of this and actually putting in the nuggets here.

00:30:00 Courtney Brame: So, we'll put a pin in that right now and just use that as the example of not meeting people's expectations or, doing what you think a person's expectations are. I had no way of knowing. It's my first football game. I've never played before. I didn't know you couldn't hit people in the back. And for you to yell, hit people. I'm doing exactly what you told me to do, but it's not right or it's not what you've asked of me. You're not giving me enough information to do what needs to be done. I just know you're angry that I'm not hitting people. So, let me hurry up and hit people. That's how that was received, And the way that this kind of translates into lowercase Courtney is because all right, caps lock Courtney would have been like, he's saying hit people, but I got to do this when we running plays. This is what needs to be done. So, I did the bare minimum of get in your stance, ball snaps, run your route. Okay, now hit somebody.

Courtney Brame: just default like that whereas should have been all right I'm gonna ask him what he talking about because I don't see what the problem is when we came off to the sideline whenever I was sitting on the bench coach what you mean hit somebody I'm hitting people I'm blocking I'm running my routes what do you mean and then he would have said boy you too damn big to be out there not laying people out on the asses that's essentially what it was is that I wasn't like f****** people up the way that he expected me to be f****** people up and I can see that now I'm 31 years old so 12-13 year old Courtney didn't have this range of perspective that I now have. So I couldn't see that at that point in time, but just looking at that and tracing it back into adulthood, like that's the thing. And so now when we get into the topic of when I want to take it back to a matter of convenience, it's convenient to just conform to what other people want no matter how damaging it might be.

Courtney Brame: So if lowercase Courtney essentially is protecting myself, And what that protecting myself looked like in terms of that football game. I want to keep playing football. I wanted to keep my starting position. So I got to keep the coach happy. I'm gonna do whatever Coach says I'ma go hit somebody. Whereas the inconvenient thing would have been, "What do you mean?" questioning him, right? As a kid, you don't f* question adults. You just do what you're told, When you grow up with that, you become an adult and you don't question things. You just kind of go with what's there. You do what's told or you make your assumptions or you operate from a space of I think what they're saying they want is this, so that's what I'm going to go with.

Courtney Brame: And here we get into boundarylessness, right? f***, I did tie it together. That wasn't that bad. I'm proud of myself. And so, not having boundaries for yourself, not being able to give people what they need, the blueprint of how they can love and respect you and receive, the blueprint of how you can love and respect others. It puts us in positions where, okay, I have herpes and this person accepts me. Bam, I'm good. That's all I wanted. And I think that it really shows us just how desperate we can be for acceptance, for validation.

Courtney Brame: An STD diagnosis is a sexual trauma. I think that sexual trauma, the fact that it is a trauma, the way that we view sexual trauma, we would say, " my god, you should talk to somebody. Have you seen someone about this?" And we say that in reference to mental health. So in a sense, a sexual trauma is a mental trauma. And how do we treat that? We seek a licensed mental health care professional. Right? So that's a really good opportunity for us to take in looking at this as not necessarily a sexual thing, but a mental thing, right? Because Look at how we date. I have a podcast episode dropping next week with someone who was diagnosed at a young age immediately after a divorce. So, the first person that they dated after they got divorced was someone who gave them herpes.

High Risk, High Reward, and Seeking True Freedom

00:35:00 Courtney Brame: And I won't spoil too much of that, but I think that this is a really good in between episode to give you this background and information going into the next week's episode. So, I'll be sure to make sure that this ties into that very well. So, why do we date for the convenience of I have herpes and this person that accepts me is who I'm going to move forward with. We do it because it's easy from things that I've heard from other people. We do it because it is upholding boundaries, it's very low risk for us to just date people with herpes.

Courtney Brame: But risk, low reward, High risk, high reward. So the high risk looks like disclosing and that person outing you to your family, being a s*** person to you, telling everybody, that person possibly getting herpes, and then high reward. I have it, too. It's not really a problem for me. I like you, I have herpes. All right, that's fine. That doesn't change anything. And you get out of this full connection. Let's say that you get a whole meaningful connection and it lasts the duration that it's supposed to before it transitions into whatever it transitions to.

Courtney Brame: Be it friendship, be it relationship, be it nothing at all or one night thing or a weekend thing, whatever. That's high reward. And I think that we can become so attached to thinking that what is ideal for us when in reality it's not, And I'll use myself as an example here. I recently just released this whole idea that I have to have non-monogamy in my relationships. I don't. What I do have to have is freedom to a certain extent. And I think that non- monogamy to me has always represented freedom because I've associated freedom with being able to have sex with whoever I want. And what sex represents in that metaphorically is emotional connection.

Courtney Brame: So, I need to be able to freely connect with people because what connection looks like is me being able to interview people the way that I interview on this podcast. people really let their guards down with me. I need for that to not be a threat to my partners, whatever type of relationship I find myself in. I need to be able to be seen. I need to be heard. I need to be understood and accepted and known because I've not had that in any of my relationships in the past.

Courtney Brame: And so since making the decision to release that, I now am in fact open to whatever the relationship is supposed to look like, as long as I get that thing that I want, which is to be shown what freedom looks like. And it may not look the way that I think it does. It could look a whole different way. Someone is going to see me in a way that I've never seen before. And that's when I'll know that I'm ready for whatever type of relationship that's going to be. So, this is something that, I had to come up with on my own and it's inconvenient as f*** because now my options are limited because in pursuit of that, I'm not going to bother entertaining anything that doesn't have that kind of potential. So, I'm not interested in being f*** buddies. I'm interested in being seen. Like I said, how sex, has represented this emotional connection for me.

Avoiding the Safety Net of Convenience

Courtney Brame: It's also important that I'm able to have my emotional connections and I have platonic friends that I'm attracted to, but it's not going to go past that because I'm getting that intimacy that I want on an emotional level. and it doesn't have to be sexual. It doesn't always have to have that. So, sex without emotion to me now is just completely unappealing. Somebody approaches me and they're like, I just want no feelings, no emotions. I'm like, h I don't need that in my life right now. And that's what Boundaries look like for I am not tolerating anything less than what I know I deserve. And that's how everyone's boundaries need to be.

Courtney Brame: And so when we talk about what that looks like and how inconvenient it is, like I find myself in conversations or in this safety net of distant relationships as well. And I meet a lot of people who have herpes. I meet some through other podcasts. I meet some through s*** Instagram, the number one dating site for people with herpes.

00:40:00 Courtney Brame: When you put yourself out there, you find yourself connecting with a lot of people. And some of these people, to me at least, are off limits, For various reasons, and I'm not going to share that here, but some people are just off limits. And that's that's what it is. It's inconvenient to have that boundary of them being off limits because you see the potential there that could be because it's like, we both have herpes. We're both advocating in this sex positivity space. We're both understanding. We see each other. We support one another, but all connections don't need to turn into intimate sexual physical relationships. And I'm all about just the connecting piece because I'm learning that there's so much more that can come out of that than just sex, And I say just sex, sex is in fact something that is important to me. It's not more important than friendship.

Courtney Brame: It's not more important than me having my freedom, right? Because I prioritize sex over my freedom. And I say that my freedom is the most important thing to me. And when you prioritize something over your values, over what's important to you, you become a slave to it, right? So, not that I've been a sex slave, but that's just one way to look at it. unconsciously not knowing what sex represented to me. That's what I've been. So again, sex was a way for me to emotionally connect. a way that was major to me. So essentially, I've been a slave to my emotions for a really long time. And not wanting to be with them, not expressing them. And this whole process of getting into that has been* Really inconvenient. Damn.

Courtney Brame: I've said so many curse words here. I'm going to have to mark this one explicit, unfortunately. So, not everybody's going to get to hear this podcast episode. don't Don't do that to yourself. Don't date for convenience. And we can also interchangeably replace herpes with anything else. So, let's remove herpes from this. I've been in a relationship where it was convenient for us to live together and it was convenient that the timing of it and the relationship and how it looked and how we could just be together. We didn't have to worry about dating and anything like that. I've been in these kinds of relationships.

Courtney Brame: I've been in a relationship where f*** buddies turned into dating one another, boyfriend, girlfriend, and I didn't want that. So, it was convenient for me to just give the other person what they wanted and become a slave to my feelings because, yeah, I'm having these feelings, but I'm getting what I want. So, f*** I'm getting what I want. f*** my feelings. Again, resentment is gunpowder and it's stored on the spot. All it's going to take is one little spark for that m** to blow up. And that's what happened to me a number of times. And these are the things that therapy is really highlighting for me. Now you add herpes to the mix. Herpes, let's consider it the magnifying glass. And we look at, what is it that keeps coming up for us with herpes and we talk about the convenience factor.

Herpes as a Magnifying Glass

Courtney Brame: So conveniently, I have this whole entire platform set up to where I can I'm putting myself out there as a person with herpes, as a guy with herpes, which is f* rare. I'm a f*** unicorn in the space because I'm not only someone who's herpes positive, who's open about it. I'm also a guy. I also happen to be attractive to women. And I've set myself up in a position where people can just instantly have access to me and now we can start dating. But I know for a fact that one thing I don't want is just for that to be at its core what this is about. The interaction is about. Don't want to date me just because we both have herpes because that's easy. That's convenient.

Courtney Brame: And you're not going to be the kind of person that I need who's going to be willing to look at those things, those parts of yourself and ourselves that we may not want to talk about, that may be challenging, that may be hard to look at, So, do this for yourself as well, if having herpes on both sides makes it u a convenient relationship for you, ask yourself, would I be with this person if I didn't have herpes? Because I think we just change how we look at ourselves based on what we believe about HSV and the HSV stigma. s***, is there even an HSV stigma? we hear herpes stigma everywhere, but let me see some HSV stigma s*** because when we're evolving our language around it to call it what it is, it's herpes simplex virus, the virus that causes herpes outbreaks.

00:45:00 Courtney Brame: When we give people the facts and the information about it from that angle, then what? They don't really have something to fall back on by default until they hear the trigger word herpes, right? So, this really triggers a challenge for us to not date for convenience, not operate in convenience because how you do one thing is how you do everything. Look at the other ways that having herpes has made you look for convenience and then look at the ways that it's an inconvenience- outbreaks suck ass. Yeah, having to disclose sucks ass. But look at the new, look at the challenges and what they brought to you from this. You disclose to someone and then they're like, "Nope, I don't want herpes."

Putting Healing on Display and the Goku Mindset

Courtney Brame: what was all that s*** you were talking before about how awesome I am? Does that just go out of the window Of course, nobody wants f**** herpes. if I had it my way, I wouldn't had this s***. But I am damn grateful for all- for all of the people that I've met. I accept it. I'm okay with it. And I hope to be able to use my experience now because I've really avoided and put off sharing my experience. It's been going through therapy that's made me more receptive to the idea that herpes did have a much larger impact on my life and who I am than I want to give it credit for because I used to be so resistant and be like, "Man, f*** this herpes s***. It didn't do that." I would have gone through this anyway. No way would I have started a podcast talking about herpes if it wasn't for my own herpes diagnosis.

Courtney Brame: I'd probably just been like, most of the people out here who instantly write a person off because they say they have herpes. That would have been me, right? And here I am now, given the fact that I do have herpes and I'm in this space, like I'm here and I'm at this intersection of so many different things from being a cisgendered straight black man in 2020 in the United States of America in Missouri, a f** red state, who's podcasting, who has herpes, who is open about having herpes, who's a nonprofit founder,

Courtney Brame: an executive director and has all is touching people in ways that people just don't get touched. I'm not editing this, but I really wish I could edit that out right now. That was the worst possible way to say that. But no, I think that it is really important for me to put my healing, my emotions on display, and this has always been a safe space for me to do that. And I think that over the past few months since starting therapy, this has been my outlet for emotions. a few people and then this podcast. So, I'm able to say things here as I learn to get more comfortable with expressing things vocally, via text. However, verbally, vocally. I cannot believe I just said both of those.

Courtney Brame: Another thing I want to edit out, I'm able to share my experiences here in a way that hopefully people are going to be inspired to share their experiences either with me via email or, send me a message, reach out, or open up and share with other people. I'm a different person. I'm not the same person I was at 25. I couldn't have done this podcast at 25 years old. I couldn't be in this position I'm in because I'd have up. And what I mean by that is how I recognized the inconvenience aspect. I think it took until I was maybe 26 or 27 before I started to realize that I didn't want to be with somebody just because we both have herpes. But 25-year-old if I was in this position right now, non-monogamy is great. I've got a dozen partners that I see out. Yeah, that's not me now.

Courtney Brame: But It's who I could have turned out to be because of that convenience piece. Now I want to inconvenience myself with the process of getting to know people, not having disclosed. my partners now, I disclosed to her and I was nervous as f*** because it was like, is this even the time? It's the first date, just let me go ahead and get it out there. And at the end of my disclosure, she was like, " I have it, too." And she gave me the same thing back. And I respect the s*** out of her. And I was so excited that she didn't just look me up and be like, " this is what you do." I have herpes, too, and this is convenient. I like that feeling of anxiety because again, riskreward, high risk of me disclosing to her right now, her being like, "Nope, not doing this."

00:50:00 Courtney Brame: And then the high reward was, me too. So allow yourself to be in these positions to where you're uncomfortable, to where the risk is high because the reward is going to be high. And in running away from the opportunity to experience pain, experience rejection, experience that hurt, that disappointment. You're also running away from joy. you're running away from the potential excitement of having this pleasurable experience. Running from hell, you also avoid heaven. But in a more like sex positive way, we're going to say in running from torture, you're also running from pleasure, from f** just this cosmic merging that has the potential there. Because I think at the end of the day, that's what we all want. We all want the same thing I want.

Courtney Brame: We want freedom… to just be. And we want to be seen by someone in a safe way with someone who our being is safe with, our emotions are safe with. Can I cry in front of you? Can I make corny jokes and laugh until I cry with you? Can I be vulnerable and express this pain that I'm feeling? Can I say things that I haven't even put into words yet with you? These are the kinds of things that we are also avoiding when we run away from inconvenience, when we run away from the possibility of rejection. So Don't allow yourself to stay in these s** relationships being treated like s*** all because it's safe. He's there,

The True Mission: Suicide Prevention and Embracing the Inconvenience of Life

Courtney Brame: I wanted to tie this in here, too, but I'm running out of recording time and I'm just going to have to get an iPhone. I have to get an iPhone again cuz this s*** just isn't working for me. I didn't even realize it's been 51 minutes and 52 seconds until I just looked down and I feel like I've been talking fast and I still have so much more to say. But as far as there was a conversation that I had with one of our podcast guests that we had on before and we were talking about the intersections of our work.

Courtney Brame: As a cisgendered, heterosexual Black man with herpes, there's a lot expected of me. And I find myself, the conversation that we had was just like, how do I fit all of these people? How do I please all of these people? How do I serve all of these people? And it's easy to go into that. This group wants this from me. I think people will need more herpes content. I think people who are struggling with their needs need more mental health content. I think that people need more sex positive content. I think that the people who view me as a therapist need more of that kind of content. No, what it is is you identify that thing that you so strongly connect with and you stick to that. That is your intention. That is going to be your driving force. And when you do that, it just so happens that it expands into all these other areas.

Courtney Brame: People look at me and they go, "You're doing such a great thing for people with herpes." It's like they call me the herpes podcast or the dude with herpes, whatever the case may be. At its core, I am here for suicide prevention. It may be 10,000 people who say thank you or hear this podcast, hear my voice, and are excited about the resources being provided. But that one out of 10,000, that one person who tells me, "Hey, I found your podcast when I was going through a really rough time. I was depressed. I was suicidal. I attempted suicide. And then finally I just Googled herpes and I found your podcast." And it's just been so helpful to me. That's that one in 10,000 that dozen people who reached out to me with that story, whatever it is, like that's who I'm here for.

Courtney Brame: And in turn of being here for those people with the intention of just keeping someone here on this earth alive a little bit longer, it's expanded into the herpes space, sex positive space, the social justice issues space, women's rights, the sex positive movement in general, which encompasses all of these things. and I'm seeing in so many different lights, but it's like, bro, I'm only here cuz I like and this is why I like Goku so much from Dragon Ball Z. Goku just likes to fight at the end of the day. He wants to get better. He wants to be the strongest. He wants to protect Earth, He fights for the joy of fighting, And for me, if I'm bringing in that analogy, I'm just here because I like living. I like life. All of this s*** that comes with it. Yeah.

00:55:00 Courtney Brame: I've been unemployed. I lost jobs, struggle been broken up with, got herpes, got f** chlamydia twice in the same week. And so, all of this to say, I am here for life. That's what I'm here for. I'm here for people to find me living and want to live with me. Goku is like, "Hey, come fight with me. We'll get stronger. live with me. We will enjoy life, and will thrive in it. Let's all do that. And It's inconvenient as f*** cuz sometimes you're going to get your ass kicked if you're Goku and sometimes you're going to be misunderstood and you're going to get your feelings hurt if you're Courtney. But I can deal with this inconvenience. I can deal with that more so than I can deal with the convenience of just living up to those other expectations exclusively.

Outro: Funding Therapy and Staying Sex Positive

Courtney Brame: So,* on Instagram I'll post podcast episodes sometimes they get 20 likes. I'll post a meme about herpes and get 500-600 likes. That ain't what I'm here for. I can dabble into that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, again, something positive for positive people. It's a suicide prevention resource. It just happens to expand into sexual health, sex education, relationships, boundaries, and all of this is coming from my own healing experience, from my own relationship with suicide. I've never been suicidal because I've loved life so much. But people around me growing up, they've attempted suicide, they've ide suicide, and here I am now in a position where people are able to find this resource.

Courtney Brame: And if they are experiencing that, I'm a place that they can come to. Like I said, come live life with me. So if you're someone who is struggling with herpes and suicide ideation or you've attempted suicide, come find let me know that this is what you're going through. I'll be here with you. I can't really provide you with any personal mental health counseling services, but I have the resources and tools to be able to connect you to the support that you need. So again, just come live with me, it's inconvenient if you don't like your life, if you hate how things are, if herpes was such a b**** to you, and now you have the inconvenience of having to have conversations with partners, maybe outbreaks, have to live your life better, work on yourself, work out or move your body, work on your nutrition and manage your stress and take care of your mental health. Yeah, all that s***'s convenient, but inconvenient, but It's worth it as f***. So, stay here with me. Continue living.

Courtney Brame: Continue to go through the inconvenience, the ups and downs, the suffering, the struggling. come go through all that s*** cuz we got a whole community here of people who are welcoming you with open arms. And all you got to do at this point is reach out. We're supportive. We're here. And I don't really know how to close that out. So, if you listen through all of this, I appreciate it. The trucks and cranes and tractors and stuff outside were not near as loud or frequent as they could be, which lets me know that this is something that was supposed to have been done. I'm going to go ahead and upload this podcast. Thank you so much to our sponsors, BetterHelp and Let's Get Checked, which is www.trylgc.com/spfpp for your first at home STI testing kit to get 30% off of that.

Courtney Brame: Make sure whenever you check out you enter the code spf at the end there. I mentioned earlier we got 10 people in therapy and with this I'm going to have a good sample size to put together something for fundraising purposes and present this to people and be like hey here's how we're helping people who are living with herpes by getting them the mental health care services that they need. Give us money so we can do this more replicated across the board. where I put it out there with BetterHelp about being able to expand this network so that maybe I can find therapists in their network across the world and be able to pay for people's therapy directly through that.

Courtney Brame: So, how we get money is going to look different, but I'm very confident in the donors that we have, the people who are regularly donating or who just drop us $5, $10 here and there. All of that helps because I'm negotiating my ass off to get these rates down so that we can get as much as we can from who we have to work with and we're working with some great people. that's it. visit www.spfpp.org or the website. And if you go to the press media coverage tab, you'll see all of the recent podcasts that I've been on. And we were on This Podcast Will Kill You podcast, which was probably the biggest one that we've been on. And that's one that brought a lot of people here. So, that's got a lot of great information about herpes, the history, the stigma, where we are with it now, and information about the virus, because I don't talk about those things myself, but we got two verologists that do.

01:00:00 Courtney Brame: Till next time, stay sex positive. Meeting ended after 01:00:55