Trigger Warnings of abuse, sexual assault, and some new revelations our guest Tammy had during our discussion.

This can be challenging to listen to, so I encourage you to take care of yourself as you listen, or honestly maybe skip this one altogether. Abuse looks a variety of ways and what we discuss here are some identifiers of potential abuse. Again, trigger warning, abuse.

Laureen (not HD) is a trauma therapist, bikini competitor, East coaster, and a human who has experienced excessive bullying for most of her life for various reasons. I wanna preface this episode by asking that you respect her bravery in making herself accessible to people by not making any comments about her physical appearance please. It was amazing that she offered us her story and the vulnerability that came with it. Now that’s out of the way . . .

As a Bikini Competitor, Laureen had what became realized as her first outbreak while on stage in a competition. There was a sense of denial with the initial symptoms which she went to the ER for not once or twice, but 3 times where she was treated for the common, curable STIs because they thought that was the cause of her discomfort/symptoms. She was able to focus on her show by just pushing this all down. She eventually received a diagnosis and meds to treat the symptoms and outbreak, but still sort of navigated the denial stage of grief. Connect with Laureen on Instagram @__Laureen (that's two underscores before her name)

Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette in Portland, Oregon joins us for a conversation that taught me a few things I hadn't known before. For instance, I was completely unaware that after you receive treatment from a healthcare facility, you can make an appointment to ask questions. I don't know why but I absolutely thought appointments were exclusively for treatment, not education. Lena and Olivia were great to learn from and give us further insight to how Planned Parenthood services can be utilized by patients.

The more we're able to exchange dialogue about stigmatized topics, the less stigmatized they become. With education and the expectation of communication (wow what a sentence), we can inspire allyship in our surrounding communities. This includes our sexual partners, our peers, friends, families, health care providers, media personalities/influencers. This sense of allyship can serve as a catalyst for folks to feel supported in their own dissolution of internalized stigma not just with their own sexual health, but even communicating ABOUT sexual health altogether.

We close out the Discordant Dating series of Something Positive for Positive People with Jesse. Jesse is someone who experienced an oral herpes outbreak and speaks to having learned from an extensive dialogue between him and his doctor. We talk about disclosing or not disclosing oral herpes vs genital herpes. It’s not that there’s a misconception that there’s something different. I am learning that there’s a consistency in that people generally have a discomfort speaking about sex in general. Taking it a little deeper, it’s likely about just not knowing what it’s like to have/live with or have had people share their herpes status with them in the past, you know?

This episode highlights just how important education is when it comes to oral herpes (and obviously sex education in general). But how our guest speaks to his experience with his friends during his oral herpes outbreaks speaks to how stigma remains prevalent. We all know someone who has herpes, and THAT needs to be an ongoing narrative as it is more reflective of society than “Everybody has herpes”. It also invalidates the lived experiences of people who have herpes, disclose and are judged by people unaware of their status or who don’t have herpes. Adding to that, the people who have or get cold sores but don’t know they’re herpes contribute to this too. Cold sores are herpes. You hear it straight from our guest here.

We speak to many aspects of assessing compatibility. For instance, if someone lives too far, and you’re unwilling to commute 45 minutes to visit, and that’s your dealbreaker then that has nothing to do with a person just not a fit for something important to you like closeness. That’s one example to be considered when deciding who’s worth the “risk” if you will. Looking at the Pandemic, we make ongoing choices day in and day out as we interact with others to decide who’s worth it if we get Covid from them. The same rules apply with sex and STIs, and then we have to look at HSV. I think we need to see compatibility as compatibility and non-negotiables non-negotiables.

That phrase, ignorance is bliss has officially been cancelled. It’s ignorance that perpetuates stereotypes that keep unfavorable circumstances of the status quo uplifted. In this case, the status quo being that we don’t speak about the reality of potentially having already been exposed to herpes far before we either have someone share their positive status with us, or we present symptoms ourselves. How we respond to these scenarios is a direct reflection of how knowledgeable we are about not just herpes, not just sexual health, but also humanness of the human condition.

Paul is the symptom-free/negative half of a discordant relationship. At 51 years old, he speaks from wisdom of lived experiences that revolve around maturity and emotional intelligence. So what is it that made him decide to move forward when his partner shared her positive HSV status with him? It’s easy, knowledge. This wasn’t our guest’s first rodeo with a partner who was positive for herpes, but it was the second rodeo where a partner had disclosed that to him. He values the vulnerability that comes with sharing a positive HSV status over the risk of transmission.

I ask him some real questions such as “are you prepared to receive a diagnosis or have initial symptoms?” and he answered truthfully. No one willingly went out and chased down herpes. We all just ended up being exposed and having symptoms, or we are exposed. What I think I’m coming up with in these conversations is that it’s important to change the way we have conversations about connecting in general. If your values don’t align for whatever the nature of the connection with another person, whether short term or long term, don’t waste anyone’s time. Everyone can go their separate ways in pursuit of what IS in line with their values and also have a much more pleasant interaction.

To this day, a Pandemic, a new baby, and ongoing sexual relations with a herpes positive partner are all seemingly nothing in the grand scheme of being clear on his values and bigger picture. Knowing what you want, AND being confident enough to say whether or not someone has the potential of providing that for you is really where the magic is.

Are YOU willing to do something different to get something you’ve never had before? Does the person in front of you presenting this disclosure support your values and integrity? Do you want the same things over the same time frame? Is this about short term or ongoing engagement? Take these kinds of things into consideration when choosing a partner PERIOD. This isn’t about herpes, this is about decisiveness. It’s about clarity on remaining integral to your values and beliefs. No one “has it all together”. But we can damn sure align ourselves with people who WANT to.

Here we have the first of what I hope to be many shared experiences of people who have dated someone living with herpes while not having had symptoms or tested positive themselves. Our guest Laura shares what her experience has been dating someone non monogamously for more than a year.

On this episode we chat about how she received her partner’s status share as something sexy given the vulnerability that comes with sharing something so intimate. We also speak to how his confidence and communication skills may have contributed heavily to her decision to move forward compared to if he wasn’t confident disclosing his status to her. Another thing that came up in this portion of the podcast is her placing more value on their compatibility with one another as a whole rather than just on the potential limitations herpes may put on their potential for uninhibited sex.

It’s cool to hear Laura’s side of things and I hope this podcast can serve as a useful resource to discordantly dating couples where one person is positive for HSV whereas the other is negative or unaware of their status. Laura also speaks to advocating for her health with her doctor. As someone who is knowledgeable of health care providers’ resistance to herpes testing thanks to Dr. Evelin Dacker’s resources, Laura knew what to say and how to say it in order to get a herpes test for herself regardless of its accuracy.

Laura’s experience is not to be reflective of every negative person in a discordant relationship. This is just something to expand our perspective. I hope the cluster of stories and experiences put together in this series not only encourage confidence for those who have a positive status to share, but also for people who are gathering information after having a positive status shared with them to just be receptive to allyship when it comes to herpes stigma.

Knowing what it means to date outside your race/culture including how social dynamics play a role in how we interact with one another is something that can be assessed over time, or it can be discussed through direct communication. Jennifer speaks to developing an apathetic attitude toward some of the ignorance she’s experienced over the years, and decides who’s worth the emotional labor to call in for a conversation about why some things said are not okay.

We also discuss revisiting a herpes disclosure after a person has made the choice to move forward. Jennifer shares the perspective of having to acknowledge the realness of herpes which means having to tell partners she’s having an outbreak. Think of the comfort created over time. You’ve worked through the nerves that come with sharing your status to this potential partner. Time passes and you’re both in a good place about it then you have to pause sexual activities. The conversation kind of has to come up again. Jennifer shares how she’s navigated that with partners as well.

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As I've been applying for grants/funding and experiencing rejection on a regular basis, I've come to realize through this series of recordings that I'm trying to fit in to places where I'm not blank enough. I'm not queer enough, black enough, or manly enough to belong in those spaces. This translates into SPFPP because it isn't enough about sex, mental health, or herpes to receive funding from places that on the surface make sense for it. It isn't blank enough to fit in because I'm not blank enough to fit in. And it took for me to realize this in order to once again reconnect with MY core and allow what radiates from it to be focused into the core of what I invest energy into. The Question mark in the center of the triangle graphic for this "Belonging Series" represents who I am. I'm someone who's lived experiences that covered that core. My healing process is deconstructing those identifiers and labels so that I can reconnect with my core and therefore let what aligns with it align with it. SPFPP is a suicide prevention resource at its core. I keep applying for sex/mental health/herpes related grants and the rejections are invalidating to me because they are. I keep trying to find community in herpes spaces, with men, in queer spaces, with other black people seeking out where my identity will be validated, and I'm only finding myself realizing I'm not blank enough to belong.

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