If you’re single and you have herpes, you’ve probably heard of herpes dating sites<. Some of them have been online for up to 17 years, and some of the biggest herpes dating sites have thousands of success stories from their members. But what is it actually like to use these websites?
Some of our visitors here at TopHerpesDatingSites.com have joined multiple websites, and they’ve offered to share their experiences with us.
These stories are firsthand accounts of people’s experiences with the herpes dating sites that we recommend to our readers. This information can help you decide whether or not these websites might be a good fit for you.
By the way, if you’d like to share your own experience with our team, feel free to reach out to us anytime.
“Jeff,” An Attractive Guy Looking for Love Online
“Jeff,” who chose to keep his real name anonymous, emailed us at TopHerpesDatingSites.com offering to share his experiences with some of the top herpes dating sites. We sat down with him via Skype and interviewed him.
Jeff is a friendly, talkative guy in his early 30s. He’s quite fit, and fitness is something that’s quite important to him. Overall, he’s a very attractive man, and he’s also a really nice guy. His next girlfriend will be a very lucky woman!
The thing with Jeff is that he’s quite picky about the women he dates. He’s not interested in just settling for anyone. He wants someone he genuinely feels is a good match for him.
Here’s a transcript of our Skype interview with Jeff.
Q: So, if you don’t mind us asking a sensitive question, how did you contract the Herpes virus?
It’s okay, I don’t mind, I’m willing to talk about it. Basically, I got it from a woman who insisted that she’d been tested for STDs. Turns out she hadn’t been.
This woman… oh man, this woman. I mean, I’ve forgiven her. It’s the right thing to do. But I was angry that she betrayed my trust. It wasn’t anything serious, just casual sex, but this girl and I run in the same social circles, and she has a bit of a reputation. I mean, I’m not trying to slut shame anyone here, but the more partners you have, the higher your chances are of getting an STD, you know?
I asked her to get tested before we hooked up. She was really into me, and she said she would. She told me her tests came back clean, so I thought, “Okay, awesome, we’re good to go.” So she came over a couple times to my place, we had some fun, and I thought that was pretty much the end of it.
When I found out, it was hard, you know? I mean, that’s a huge bombshell to get dropped on you out of nowhere. I’ve been sexually active since… wow, since I was about 18. I have always been super careful about STDs. I mean, no one wants to get an STD.
I took all the precautions I could, especially with casual sex. I wear condoms, even for oral. I insist on using a diaphragm for oral with women, unless it’s a long term relationship and I know she’s clean. I even get myself tested every single year, just in case.
Like I said, I’m won’t let myself dwell on it and dwell on the anger I feel. But it was a huge blow to my entire life. Now I have medical bills for expensive pills to keep outbreaks from flaring up, I have blisters on my dick, and I have to deal with the stigma that comes with having herpes. Dating is hard when you have an STD.
Q: What do you think about using herpes dating sites?
You know, a lot of people figure that people who don’t have the disease won’t care. In my experience, yeah, people can sometimes be pretty accepting about it. But if I have this disease, I’m not going to risk infecting someone else. Not until there’s a cure.
If you could take something and have this go away forever, it would be different, but unfortunately, this isn’t the case. So I’m much more comfortable finding partners who also have herpes. Does that narrow the dating pool? Yes. But I don’t want to be responsible for doing to someone else what that girl did to me.
Q. What have your experiences been like on herpes dating sites?
The two sites I decided to try were Positive Singles and MPWH.
I went for MPWH first because it caters specifically to people with herpes, not other STDs. But I wasn’t really finding very many people in my area, so it was really slim pickings. I signed up for PositiveSingles and realized that there were a lot more people near me.
My free MPWH account did get me a few numbers, but as I mentioned to you, I’m picky. I wasn’t really into any of these chicks, so I decided to stop using the site.
With PositiveSingles, I was able to initiate contact more easily. I have a paid account, by the way. So I got a bunch of interest, but to be brutally honest, there were two, maybe three women I’d actually be interested in dating.
But I felt like the connections we made were weak. These were really attractive women, and they have a ton of options. I know I’m attractive, I’m in good shape, I make good money, and I’m a pretty fun guy to be around. But so are a lot of other people.
Chicks who are a solid 9 out of 10 can have pretty much any guy they want, you know? But at the same time, I don’t want to settle for a 5. I know I can find the right woman, and I don’t believe in just settling for someone who isn’t your ideal partner.
I ended up just letting my PositiveSingles account expire without going on any dates. But I don’t want to make it sound like the website sucks, you know? It doesn’t. There are plenty of women in my area, plenty of people nationwide. It could be awesome for someone else.
But I’m picky. Narrow dating pools get even narrower for me because of that. I want to point out that yeah, I could have gone on plenty of dates with various women. A ton of them were interested in me. It’s not like I didn’t find anyone. But I don’t settle for less, and when it comes to the genuinely attractive women on those sites, the competition is fierce.
Before my diagnosis, I was able to date almost every girl I was interested in. Maybe it’s just the nature of face-to-face interaction versus meeting someone online. There’s more chemistry that way, you know?
What I think is that yes, these sites could totally work. But you need two things: money and patience. Sure, I was totally willing to pay for my membership, so that’s one out of two. But I just don’t have the energy and time to go back and forth through chats and stuff. It’s a little draining after a while.
Herpes Dating Expert Suggestion
We have reviews of both the sites Jeff used. Out of all the herpes dating sites out there, PositiveSingles has the biggest user base by far. But with that said, it still takes a lot of patience to find the right person online.
Whether you’re using a herpes dating site, or mainstream sites like OKCupid and Plenty of Fish, it takes time. If you’re using a mainstream site and you have herpes, it takes even more time, because you have to filter out the people who stigmatize you because of your disease.
“Carl,” a Recently Diagnosed Single Looking for a Good Time
This interview is with “Carl,” a friendly and laid-back software programmer who was diagnosed relatively recently. Like Jeff, he chose to keep his real name confidential.
Carl, has both type 1 and type 2, and his diagnoses took him by surprise. Currently, he’s trying to adjust to dating with herpes. Carl is 26, and he was diagnosed with herpes at a time in his life when he was thinking about trying to settle down and find a long term relationship. Despite this, Carl has kept a very positive attitude.
Q: If you don’t mind this kind of question, do you know how you contracted the virus?
You know, what really confuses me is that I have type 1 and type 2. I’m not sure how that happened. My first outbreak prompted me to go to the doctor right away.
It happened not too long after I had sex with a girl I met during my internship. We were semi-together at that time, but I moved after college, so we don’t really see one another. We still talk, though.
I still don’t know if I got type 1 and type 2 both from her, or if my double diagnosis means I had one of them to begin with, and just never knew about it. I’ll be honest, I’d never really gone for regular STD screenings or anything. I used condoms and practiced safe sex, but I guess I never really stopped to think about the fact that condoms aren’t very effective against herpes. It’s one of those things where I didn’t think it could happen to me, you know?
But here I am. So I’m trying to make the most of it.
Before I had sex with that one girl during my internship, my last partner had been my ex of eight months. Obviously, she and I had sex a lot. There were no issues on either end, so again, it confuses me. The breakup wasn’t pretty, and we don’t really talk anymore.
I know I should grow some balls, call her up, and tell her to get tested. It would probably be the right thing to do. But honestly, I looked her up on Facebook, and she seems to be getting along just fine. She’s engaged now, and she’s also seven months pregnant.
If she suspected something, I’d think she would have confronted me by now. I just don’t want to reopen any old wounds, you know?
Q: What was your experience like with herpes dating sites?
You know, I’d kind of dipped my toes into mainstream dating sites, but disclosing the fact that I have herpes is a big hurdle to jump through. I actually went ahead and did a couple of Google searches trying to find dating sites for people with herpes. I checked out a couple of the review sites, and ended up going with PositiveSingles.
I paid for a month, and it wasn’t all that long before I found a date. Nice girl from my area, grad student. Pretty attractive, fun to talk to, all that good stuff. So we went out, saw a community theatre play, then got dinner at a pretty nice restaurant.
We hooked up, and we both had a pretty good time. We were both pretty, you know, excited, turned on, but we didn’t go too far. It was the first date, but mostly, I didn’t actually know my type yet, so we wanted to play it safe.
Fast forward, and I got my actual diagnosis. Type 1 and Type 2. I had one mild outbreak, and no problems since then. The girl from PositiveSingles is a little hesitant now, and wants to talk to her doctor before we spend more time together and get more intimate. I understand that, I guess. It’s a little disheartening, but hey, good to play it safe.
I brought that up mostly to illustrate the point that it matters which type you have. The two kinds of herpes aren’t one hundred percent identical.
Q: Do you have any tips or suggestions for people with herpes who want to try out a herpes dating site?
Okay, so when I first signed up for PositiveSingles, my profile was basically fake. Fake name, fake address, and even a fake email address through Hushmail to set the account up. It feels silly looking back on it, but I really just wanted to see how many people were out there. Turns out there are a ton of people in my city!
I was actually kind of relieved to see so many people so close to me. I was mostly looking at women, but I’m bi, and some of the guys caught my eye too. One good thing about the site is that you can specify whether you have HSV-1, HSV-2, or both.
I actually kind of recommend making a phony profile at first. Just check the place out, see if there’s anyone in your area, and start getting comfortable with it. It can be kind of intimidating.
I’m not sure I’m quite ready to reenter the dating world just yet. I’m still adjusting to my diagnosis. But you know, when I am ready, I’m totally making a real profile, getting some nice photos taken of me, and giving it a shot!
Herpes Dating Expert Suggestion
Carl is suggesting that you use a fake name and address, but honestly, we don’t really recommend doing this. Some herpes dating sites actually deliver messages to the registered email address, so you have to remember to check it every so often, or have it forwarded to your main email. There’s a risk you might not notice a new message if it’s going to a throwaway email address.
If you’re going to go that route, though, make sure you use an email service that won’t cancel your account for inactivity. Unless you want to pay for it, we don’t recommend using Hushmail for this reason. After two weeks without checking your mail, they cancel your account, and you need to pay to get it back. You might want to check out Mail.com or ProtonMail, which let you make an account easily without the need for phone verification or anything like that.
