Please help me on this ....

My wife was recently diagnosed with Gentital Herpes. This was after displaying all the classic signs of a primary outbreak including lesions, flu like symptoms and vaginal discharge.
We are still awaiting a positive viral test. My wife has been monogamous for the last 12 years, of that I am sure of. I, however, had a single episode of protected vaginal and oral, with a sex worker, sex 20 months ago.
I owned up to this with my wife and subjected myself to extensive testing for all STI's (or so I thought). We had just rebuilt our relationship when my wife shows sign of Herpes. I subsequently found out that people don't get screened for Herpes.
I have never shown any symptoms whatsoever. To help understand what was going on I had a Herpes Igg Type blood test (20 months), but this came back negative. I really need to know whether I gave my wife herpes for a few reasons;

1) dealing with the guilt/responsibility of it
2) knowing whether I need to protect myself from my wife's Herpes
3) finding out what type (1 or 2) that it is.

With all this detail and the negative test it would appear there can only be 3 options;

1) I have herpes and the test is not accurate enough to pick it up
2) I don't have herpes and my wife has a long dormant (12 yrs+) infection
3) My wife does not have Herpes, but something else.

It would greatly help me if you would indicate which one of these three options is the most likely.

Many, many thanks.

[gracefromHHP]

If you can get a copy of your herpes blood test and post the results here I can better help you. I just need to see the numerical results - ie hsv1 igg >5 and hsv2 igg .34 or whatever they are.

Yes indeed your wife could've had herpes since before she met you and just never had a very obvious ob until now.  Even though hers appears to be a "classic" first infection - it might not be. She could be sick with something else that triggered this more severe infection ( herpes doesn't always follow the rule book either ). Did she just have a lesion culture done of active symptoms or did she also have a herpes blood test done too?

And yes your 3rd scenerio is also possible. That's why we recommend follow up testing for herpes - a visual diagnosis is wrong about 1/3 of the time even in experienced practioners.

grace