Sorry this is long -- I'm confused and beside myself with guilt. I've been reading a ton of these to see if anyone had situations similar to mine, and people always ask for more info, so I'm including as much as possible here.
We've been together for 7 months (since the beginning of February) and have been having unprotected sex the whole time. He's been having sex for 20 years and had never been STD tested, but always asked his partners their status. I've been having sex for 15, and have always gotten STD tested regularly and sometimes at multiple places in a short span of time "to be safe" (or maybe paranoid). In our first month together, I told him that I'd been told I had tested positive for HSV once many years ago, probably close to 10 (I don't know what kind of test was used, and I don't know which type of HSV -- I had no idea it was so complicated), but have always had negative results after that. I dated a doctor for a few years around that time who I told about this, and he assured me things were fine, so I've always assumed that one test was a false positive and I was negative, especially since I've never had outbreaks, and I've never had a situation where any partner has had outbreaks.
Over the weekend, my (possibly now ex?) boyfriend had what looked at first like an ingrown hair on his pubic bone area right where the shaft starts. He had no other symptoms other than fighting off a cold we both got when we came back from Burning Man on September 2. The "ingrown hair" got worse, so Monday (September 10), he went to urgent care and the doctor visually diagnosed him with herpes. I ordered a blood test from RapidScreenings.com and went to a lab to get blood drawn. On Wednesday, his swab came back positive for HSV2 (I think they only tested for HSV2), and my blood work came back positive for HSV2 (IGG). Today, his blood work came back negative. I don't know what test they used: if it was IGG or IGM, if it was for both HSV1 and 2, or anything else.
I just know that I feel terrible because I'm worried that a positive culture swab and a negative blood test means that it's recent and that I gave it to him.
Did I?
Have I had this for a long time and just never had symptoms?
Please don't try to make me feel better if I did. We'd resigned ourselves to believing that we'd both had it, dormant, for years and not known about it. That was better. Me giving it to him changes things a lot. He's very upset and not speaking to me, which I can understand. I feel incredibly irresponsible and like I've tainted some clean, perfect creature. While I love him and want to stay together, I honestly don't know if that will be possible.
Aside: We're also a bit baffled by the nonchalance of the medical world about this, and how no one seems to advise testing for it. In fact, I'm wondering how many of the dozens of times that I've been tested for STDs have they actually included testing for HSV, even when I asked for it, or if they did, what kind of test they did and how accurate it was. Were all those things I thought were subsequent "negative results" just the absence of HSV testing or bad testing?! A lot of times, I go to free clinics -- places that only call you if you have something, and where you never see your paperwork, so I don't even know if I can track down those records, but I'm trying.