[50sLady]

Oh, toomuchfun, do I ever know how you feel. It was really good to see your post, although I know we all wish we did not have this in common.

It is amazing to find that the medical community is really not all that concerned about herpes. It's not life threatening. It really is an annoying skin virus that unfortunately will never leave you.

There is daily suppressive medicine to help control the outbreaks, which is the painful and inconvenient part of it all. When you do not have an outbreak, you almost forget you have it. If you are married, you both are exposed and come to terms with it. Life goes on. If you have genital herpes, no one else even knows about it.

The medicine also helps to reduce the asymptomatic shedding, which is the most difficult part of managing herpes. You can have no symptoms and no pain or sores, but you can be contagious. The problem is that you never know when that is. It could be every day or once a week or one day a month or never. Asymptomatic shedding is the way herpes is spread most of the time. People can think their play partners are clean and their skin is clear but they could infect you anyway.

As you have experienced, herpes is much more than just a skin virus when you are a swinger. You have to tell the ones you played with recently. Depending upon who you played with and when, you can guess who might have given it to you, but you really will never know. You can only tell them that you may have exposed them to it. It was not easy, as you well know.

Thank YOU for posting. I am glad to know I am not the only "H" former Swinger reading this board.

50s Lady