Friend Issue

Hi everyone. My best friend was diagnosed with genital herpes this week. At first she was crying and upset and now in clearly in denial. She is rationalizing and making light of the situation. The problem is that she won't tell her 2 past sex partners that she has been disgnosed with herpes. Here is the other thing. One guy is my brother in law and the other is a good friend of my family. Both of these guys are very sexually active. In fact one of them is planning on having sex tonight. She refuses to alert them and I am scared that they may have it and pass it on. If these guys were just strangers I wouldn't feel as badly, but they are very close to me and I feel like I am betraying them, but telling them would be betraying her. What do I do. Everytime I tell her she needs to tell them she fights with me and shuts me out.

[gracefromHHP]

It honestly is her business, not yours. Your friends are adults and should be sexually responsible and taking care of their own health. If you have concerns about them, why not talk to them about safer sex practices and the fact that herpes testing isn't a part of routine std testing?

it is hard to be in a situation like this but it's not your place to be talking about her private health information that she shared with you with others. Give her some time to adjust and let her make the choices as to how to deal with part partners.

encourage her to read the free herpes handbook by Terri Warren. google it and it comes right up. Terri is medhelp's herpes expert and her handbook is a wonderful source of information for someone nearly diagnosed with herpes. There is also a terrific patient counseling video on her site too for her to watch.

Support your friend as she goes through this :)  Encourage her to learn more about her infection so she can best protect future partners. It'll be up to her if she notifies past partners or not.

grace