My sister is the bravest, most intelligent, and most beautiful person I know.
She survived a relationship where her bf beats her. It took her some time, but she was able to pick herself up and is thriving. I admire her so much for her strength.
She confined to me that she contracted genital herpes. She discovered it after she had escaped. It took a toll on her emotionally and mentally.
I was with her whenever she got depressed about her diagnosis
To make her feel better, I did extensive research during the time to let her know how common herpes is and it’s extremely manageable.
In the process, we ended up educating ourselves on it a lot and we both learned a lot about it. It helped with her coping with her diagnosis.
Whenever she feels down, I remind her about what we learned. Taking medication to prevent transmission is really no different than taking birth control and the odds of transmitting are very low.
The odds of getting pregnant on birth control are just the same as catching herpes when someone is on medication.
After a while, she finally was able to go back out there and date again. She was dating this great guy who I thought was a great match for her.
She then tells me that she decided that he wasn’t the one for her because he was a divorced single dad and she doesn’t want to be a stepmom.
I tried to very gently tell her that, although herpes isn’t life threatening, her having herpes doesn’t give her much options and that the herpes stigma unfortunately provides her with the worst case scenario.
It sucks, but if we’re being realistic, people sadly look down on people with herpes.
People would rather date single parents as opposed to someone like her, someone with herpes.
When I told her this, it offended and hurt her when I didn’t mean to. I was just trying to make her see that at this point, her standards shouldn’t be as high as they are because now her dating pool is limited.
It’s even more limited now since we are both in our 30s. So, if she wants to settle down soon, she needs really think about lowering her standards.
Editor’s notes: You’re talking about stigma and yet stigmatizing her, hypocrisy.