My previous ex that I have now been broken up with for 7 months, gave me HSV-2 due to him cheating with multiple women behind my back. Not only did I have to deal with the betrayal of the cheating but I have to live with an STD he passed to me because of it. I’ve been really hard on myself whenever talking to a guy, running off all the scenarios in my head on how I can tell them and if they’ll think I’m disgusting.
For the first time after my breakup I started talking more serious with a guy. We’ve been friends for 4 months and just started to get serious the past couple of weeks. We had sex for the first time the other day, which I had planned to tell him before about the HSV-2 but I haven’t had a sore in months and it was protected so the risk was very low. That being said, I’ve told myself I need to tell him before we have sex again regardless.
Now that I’ve explained my scenario, I really need help on how I can approach this in the most mature way that doesn’t scare him off. We’re both young, and I only know so much about HSV now because I was sadly infected with it, so I can’t expect him to be as informed and possibly even as accepting because of the way herpes is portrayed and how young we are.
I’ve never had to do something like this before and it is really difficult and embarrassing so coming from some older and more knowledgeable peers how would you go about this situation?