Cold Sores and Oral Sex

[pdx247]

Hi,

I have a new girlfriend. She said she has had cold sores in the past but no longer. I'm not sure, but from what I read is that the same thing as having oral herpes?

I went to my doctor to get a STI screening, but they said they don't normally test for herpes because the tests often give false positives. Beside, apparently almost everyone has oral herpes even if they don't know it. I might very well have oral herpes too for all I know then.

So when it comes to being safe and oral sex, we would use condoms and/or dental dams. However, from what I read some sites say it helps but others say it doesn't help.

Should we hold off on oral sex even with condoms to be safe or is this just being over safe?

This is confusing. What should we do to be safe?

Thanks

[Sam W]

Hi pdx247,

You're correct that Herpes Simplex One is what cold sores are a symptom of. It sounds like you're already taking a lot of the steps needed to be as safe as possible. The trick with herpes is that even with standard safer sex practices, there may still be a risk. You can read about why that is, and how to decrease the risk as much as possible, in this article: HPV & Herpes: Why Safer Sex Isn't Always Safe Enough

[pdx247]

Thanks, that helped. 70% is better than 0% so condoms make sense.

I bought 1 dental Dam since it said I could use a cut up condom too and I didn't know which was better. I got some condoms and tried masturbating with them. I tried not following the directions to see if they would break. I couldn't get them to break no matter what I tried and I tried some pretty crazy things, so they seem good. I don't see why people are claiming they can break.

I'm still confused about hsv1 and hsv2. If you can get genital herpes from someone that has hsv1 by oral sex, then is that still possible if you already have hsv1 when you were a kid? I mean, what kid didn't drink out of someone else's glass? I don't recall, but I bet I did that plenty. You're already infected with hsv1 right? So how can you get infected again by oral sex?

[Mo]

My understanding is that if you have HSV1 that presents, say, as cold sores, it's very unlikely that you would get it somewhere else, like your genitals, from a partner who also had HSV1; it's not something that continued contact will keep spreading to new parts of your body. However, if you don't know if you have HSV1 or not, then you would still run the risk of a partner transmitting it to you, and it's possible to get HSV2 from a partner who has it, even if you already have HSV1.

[pdx247]

Got it. Sounds like there's no way to know. My doctor said there has to be a sore for them to test. If I've ever had one, I don't recall it. I think we should hold off on the oral sex we talked about on the phone, at least until we talk again. I'm not too concerned about the kissing. It looks like more people have oral herpes than don't, so this just looks like something you can't reasonably avoid anyway. I'm not going to not kiss her because of that.

Thanks for the help

[Mo]

You're welcome!