Transcript
Courtney Brain (0:02)
That was loud. It's always so loud. Welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brain. Something Positive for Positive People is a non profit organization that supports people navigating herpes stigma. July 21st we have our stars talk with Dr. Evelyn Decker. This is going to be virtual at 8:30pm Eastern time. We got about 20 people registered. This is not a free event. It's calling for like at least a little donation of some sort so you can get access to it. But it'll be great. And it's a wonderful tool for navigating relationships, dating and disclosure. If you're somebody who needs that, even if you're in a relationship, it's good for you to be able to take that and utilize it for check in purposes with partners and just reevaluate what your desires are in a relationship. I think that over time we grow, evolve, change and become different versions of ourselves that sometimes we can feel invalidated if the other person is not noticing that or able to support that as well. So it's a really good tool for conscious relationships. All right. But today I have a guest with me. Today I'm. I'm picking the dust off. I haven't been doing these interviews as consistently as I normally do. And when we were talking earlier, what made me want to do this was as you were speaking about like, not, I don't want to use the wrong language, but what you were talking about was avoiding intimacy in a way or just not being intimate right now. And I recognize a pattern. We had our men's group last night and we had someone come in and he was talking about avoiding intimacy as well. And he spoke very logically about his diagnosis that he'd only date someone who also had his type of herpes. And that was often what he would lead with. And what I was learning in that conversation is just how difficult it is to connect when everything is so like systematic. Yes. No black and white of his case. Do you have my type of herpes? If no, we're done. And then your case you just said I'm avoiding intimacy right now because.
Javan (2:27)
Yeah, I can elaborate. I'm literally about three months in. I still don't know what type I have. A lot of people say it doesn't matter, but it matters to me. When I tested, it was too early, so I'll test again eventually. It's just that I suppose it's a me thing more than anything else. This was something I never thought I would get and then I did. And it was a lot to take In. And I started trying to educate myself because I only knew the basics. I didn't think that people who had herpes were dirty or anything like that. I just thought, well, they've had some bad luck. However, though I have read, I would say I have spent hours and hours reading, I have a fear, which perhaps is irrational, of passing it on unknowingly during my potential. Not potential, during my asymptomatic shedding phases, which I will never know about because that's how it goes. And since it's so recent, my reason for staying away from intimacy and what intimacy will lead to, which is sexual, because I'm a sexual person. Was. Would like to be. Yeah. That's basically it right now. I'm just. I would like to settle for about at least six months to see how everything goes with my body. I mean, like, how often it might pop up and what my triggers are, because I still don't know.