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Knowledge is POWER.
Gender: M
Age: 41
State: New York
Country: USA
Experience...
It destroyed my marriage runien me and my life is a living hell with attacks every 4 weeks or so. I infected my wife and this has ruined her life too. She told our families.
I wish I was dead every day..my life might as well have ended the day i got it [294]
Gender: F
Age: 26
State: FL
Experience...
This is so much harder than I expected. I`ve only been married for 8 months and it feels like our relationship has totally changed. We`ve weathered a lot together-- I contracted herpes two weeks after the wedding and we think it was from having oral sex when he had a healing cold sore on his lip. It was rotten. We had just moved to a new state and it was New Year`s and I spent the whole evening in the ER having various uninformed lab techs jab my genitals with what felt like acid-tipped hunting knives (really cotton swabs). I felt dirty and horrible because even though we`ve never TALKED about it, there`s the fact that I`ve had more sexual partners than he has. He`s my 5th and I think I`m his 2nd. I know these aren`t high numbers comparatively, but it still makes me feel like the World`s Biggest Whore. I was afraid that even though it looked likely that he was the one I contracted it from, that he would have this giant reaction of horror and want to divorce me straight off. He`s very intense and private in his thinking, so this was a very real doubt in my mind. When I asked if he wanted to stay married to me ( we were in this dingy ER room waiting for another round of stabbing), he paused for a long time and said, "yes." It was hard to read the subtext of that "yes," or even if there was any. Also, I`ve been having all these guilt and remorse issues. I understand now why sex is so much more special with the person you`ve committed your life to, and I regret that I have all these memories of less-than-totally-committed sex. Mostly they were long-term boyfriends, but I absolutely knew with each of them that we weren`t going to get married.
He`s so hard to talk to, but I also feel like he`s the closest I`ve ever had to a mind-meld partner-- someone who I trust and agree with most of the time. I feel safe with him, but I also feel like there`s much more at risk because I can`t view him as someone I`m only with for a few years at most. I consider myself pretty brave when it comes to communication, so this is a real kick to the self-image.
Also, I have a hard time supporting his career. He joined the military to learn how to fly because it`s his dream. This is great, and I will support this even at the detriment to my own career goals, and I will even move with him every couple of years and uproot my own life over and over again, but I hate George Bush. I absolutely hate him. I believe he`s destroying the world and I have absolutely no faith in his decisions or his advisors, and I hate the fact that this man-child is the ultimate word on whether or not my husband goes into danger. My husband seems OK with the possibility of decades of war in the Middle East-- he views it as a sacrifice he has to make, and he doesn`t agree with the politics behind the war, but he does feel the obligation to serve. This is a source of tension. I want to be a good wife, I want to be supportive, but I hate this stupid war and I am absolutely unconvinced that we are furthering the cuase of democracy in the Middle East. And I may have to put someone very important in harm`s way for it.
Lastly-- money is a big issue. We never seem to have enough. We both come from backgrounds where we believe that prosperity means not having much debt, but it seems like all we do is accumulate debt and then throw all our money at it. We never go out anymore, we eat gross food, I feel bad if I ever want to buy anything for myself, and I have this piddly, stupid retail job because we`re at a temporary station and it doesn`t pay much at all. Plus my managers keep screwing me out of hours so they won`t have to give me full-time benefits.
Please tell me this gets better-- that eventually I`ll stop being so depressed about having herpes, that I`ll make some sort of peace with my husband`s career, that I`ll adjust to moving so much and find a way to have a more satisfying career even with all the upheaval of the coming years, and that I`ll learn how to talk to him whenever about whatever no matter what. [55]
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