On the way to work the other day she brings up.
“You said you’ll always be honest with me.”
“Yeah…” I hate conversations that start that way.
“There weren’t any women other than the ones you told me about, right?”
“No, why?”
“I have herpes.”
I don’t have herpes, at least there isn’t anywhere I could have gotten it lately. I’ve had STD panels done from time to time and I’ve been negative on the “silent” diseases each time (AIDS, syphilis and herpes). So, the question is how did she get it?
It turned out that she knows I didn’t give it to her — she got it 20 years ago from her husband (the one that died of a stroke). I’ve known her for eight or nine years. We’ve been romantically entangled for seven. We’ve had our off and on times, and while I’ve certainly had sex with other women in that six years, I’ve always been safe about it — she hasn’t even had sex with anyone other than me, so I figured I had the whole STD thing covered.
Apparently she never told me because she tested negative the last two times she was tested for anything and she figured “it went away.” Only she suddenly got a flare up after we had sex the other night. Rough angry sex, so as far as I know it might not even be a flare up and I just ripped something inside her and she’s got an infection, but… what the fuck?
I can almost understand her not telling me until now — it’s natural that she’d like to think that it “went away” and that it would just be weird to tell me about something like that from her past. Only herpes doesn’t go away. It gets into your nervous system and stays there. Forever.
So, while I can understand and even maybe forgive her optimistic ignorance, in my book of liking smart women, it’s a huge black mark in the stupidity column.
But the way she told me just pisses me off and it’s slowly simmering into a huge ball of frustrated anger. She has herpes. She never told me. And she couches it as if it’s somehow my fault when she knows full well that she’s had it the entire time we’ve been sleeping together. For years.
And because I had sex with other women in the interim I’m the bad guy. In her book sex with anyone else is dangerous sex. It doesn’t matter that she didn’t disclose the danger she was carrying — the fact that I might have been exposed to something is more dangerous in her mind than the fact that she was exposing me to something dangerous.
Add the fact that when I mentioned I got a blood test (I’m waiting on the results still) she glared at me as if I was somehow betraying her. I’m sure it’s all mixed up in her puritanical mess, but… really? You’re going to get pissed at me because I want to find out if you gave me an incurable disease?
I deal with the ghost of her dead husband. I deal with her sexual intimacy issues. I deal with her family (everyone’s family is fucked up). I deal with her hot flashes and mood swings. I deal with a lot of shit that makes her “her” and that makes it okay. Complicated, interesting people have shit in their lives, and I like complicated, interesting people
But this was outside what I expect to deal with — relationships are always minefields, but I thought I had this one mapped. Now I just have to wait for the results of the blood test to see if the mine exploded.
Comments
Now *this* would really piss me off.
I’m more depressed than angry… This is supposed to my emotionally available, honest, safe person. This is the person I let my guard down for. And this is what happens. It kinda of makes me lose faith in humanity in general, let alone the obvious, “Oh HELL no, bitch!” reaction.