Diagnosed with HSV1 after 20 years monogamy?

[Anna17]

Hi everyone - I am trying to adjust to my recent diagnosis and am still very confused and upset over it.
My husband and I have been together for 20 years. I have been completely monogamous and I'm pretty sure he has been. He swears he has never cheated and I know he can't ever tell a convincing lie, plus he's still being a bit standoffish and suspicious of me, which I figure he wouldn't be if he'd been unfaithful.
I was (until recently) HSV1/2 negative. He had HSV1 - he;d had a few cold sores as a kid and an outbreak about 10 years ago; none whatsoever since.

Like most couples, we had massive amounts of great sex during our first years together, but it dropped off as time went on and seriously took a dive after I went through menopause and we both dealt with age-related aches and pains. He had a painful back injury in January, so we;ve had almost no sex this year, I'm thinking maybe 5 or 6 times in 2015. Couple of encounters in early November, both times he had some ED problems and he switched to oral to not leave me "high and dry." He has been at his parents' house 100 miles away ever since - his dad had major surgery and his mom really needs someone there to help out for a while.

So a couple of days after he leaves, I developed a fever and what seemed like the flu. I felt awful and had no appetite. Couple days later I had painful urination and an extremely sore throat. Urination become so excruciating a few days later that I ended up at the emergency room. To my horror, the doctor found the classic blisters all over my genital and anal area and in my throat.I was dx with herpes and the culture confirmed HSV1.

It makes sense that I contracted it from receiving oral sex in early November. The severe flu symptoms and subsequently bad outbreak are typical of a primary infection, and the timing fits. But in a way it makes NO sense. I now know that the virus can be spread without active lesions (he had no trace of a cold sore, hadn't had any for a decade), but after 20 YEARS??? It certainly wasn't the first time he'd done oral, this was something that happened from time to time throughout those 20 years. I'm pretty healthy and haven't had any recent illnesses or conditions that would cause low immunity. Possibly being post-menopausal has changed things down there such that I'm more susceptible, but even that isn't a new thing; I completed menopause about 5 years ago.

I'm sure everyone dealing with a new dx has their own unfortunate set of circumstances to deal with. So here I am an "older" woman with an adult child and two teenagers, settling into middle age and kinda enjoying it...and suddenly I have HERPES? My kids are worried and wondering why I'm sick and why I walk so slowly and painfully; I am usually very honest with them, but I just can't bring myself to tell them what's going on. I mean, just imagine being a teenager and suddenly your dear old mom is suffering from an STD! I think even if they knew all the facts they'd find it troubling. Also, both of them have a slightly conflicted relationship with their dad, and I can easily imagine them thinking he cheated and I'm just in denial.

Anyway, I'm finding this whole thing about transmission after all those monogamous years very upsetting and confusing.

[Fleetwood20]

That's perfect, I hope your relationship does not suffer, there is no reason it should.

Note that although shedding occurs on about 15% of days, there is insufficient of the virus to cause infection on the vast majority of these such that the infection chance is 1 in 5000 roughly.

[Fleetwood20]

I am always curious though, what would you have wanted to do differently with the information?

Each encounter carries a risk (without lesions) of 1 in 5,000 or more remote.

[Anna17]

I've been reading a lot on HSV1 recently, as you might imagine, and it seems that asymptomatic shedding is not a rare event; A recent study says 15% of the time for type 1, which puts the risk for each encounter at something higher than 1 in 5000. But I really can't say I would have done anything differently if I'd known the risk was present but relatively small each time. The option would be to never receive oral sex or to always use "dental dams" (whatever the heck that is). I'm not sure I would have thought it was worth it if the chance of transmission was pretty low. Still, I think the diagnosis would have been easier to deal with had I known the possibility did exist. And, unfortunately, I'm sure my husband is harboring a suspicion that I recently had sex with someone else. He's being supportive and not actually accusing me of anything but I can tell he has his doubts.Had we both been aware that he could potentially transmit the virus to me someday, It's just really hard dealing with this awful outbreak, AND getting over the shock of it all  AND seeing our relationship suffering because of it.

[Life360_Dave]

Hi, those most at risk are in long term mono relationships where one person is infected. This is a classic case of transmission. You might have a blood test asap and if its negative then its is for sure recent. One good thing is that if a person is to have genital herpes, hsv1 is the one to have. This should be the only outbreak for quite some time and only sheds about 3-5% of the time.

[Anna17]

Hi - thanks so much for the information. I've looked into the issue more and it makes a lot more sense to me. My husband  was HSV1+ and asymptomatic, so he was shedding the virus occasionally, though infrequently. In this situation,odds are that the uninfected person will eventually contract the virus. One disturbing thing is that people in my age group were taught that you had 0% chance of contracting HSV unless your partner has active lesions. Now it's known that this isn't the case, but no one told us about it. And we're reasonably intelligent people, try to stay well informed, etc. I;m angry that I wasn't armed with the correct information.