Hot people get herpes. So why can a diagnosis make you feel like nobody will want you? Courtney Brame, founder of Something Positive for Positive People, joins sex therapist Michelle Fischler to talk about dating, desire, and the shame that can follow a herpes diagnosis. They get into disclosure, “clean” and “dirty” language, and what a sexual health conversation can actually sound like. There’s a second-date role-play, room for awkwardness, and a reminder that a diagnosis doesn’t tell someone everything about you.
Hot people get herpes. So why can a diagnosis make you feel like nobody will want you?
Courtney Brame remembers worrying that his sex life was over. In this episode, he joins sex therapist Michelle Fischler to talk about what happened after his diagnosis, the support that helped him, and learning to feel desirable again.
Courtney is the founder of Something Positive for Positive People, a nonprofit supporting people navigating herpes stigma and helping partners and healthcare providers talk about sex.
Michelle and Courtney get into the words that add shame, including “clean” and “dirty,” and why a diagnosis can feel like a verdict on who you are. They also try a second-date role-play: how do you bring up sexual health, find out whether someone is ready to talk, and hold a boundary without apologizing for existing?
They talk about what healthcare providers can say that helps, what can leave someone feeling dismissed, and why telling one person you trust can be a place to start.
If you’ve wondered how to tell someone, how to respond, or whether sex and dating can still feel good after a diagnosis, this conversation is for you.
Key Topics & Timestamps
00:00 First symptoms
00:39 Introducing Courtney Brame
03:21 Life before the diagnosis
06:37 Diagnosis and family support
11:21 Telling the next partner
12:33 Inheriting herpes stigma
16:17 Challenging “my sex life is over”
18:42 The body as an apartment complex
22:59 Retiring stigmatizing language
26:47 Feeling desirable again
27:58 Second-date role-play: talking about sexual health
32:25 More than your diagnosis
35:09 Responding to disclosure
37:15 Stigma-informed healthcare
40:13 One thing to do after a diagnosis
41:44 Where to find Courtney
42:57 Credits
Find Courtney Brame:
Instagram: @CourtneyBrame
Something Positive for Positive People Podcast
Resources from Courtney:
Herpes Support Group
How to Disclose
Stigma-Informed Training
[00:00] Courtney Brame: I was cold. I stumbled to the restroom. I didn't feel any physical symptoms on my genitals, but when I grabbed my penis to go pee, it felt like what can best be described as about a nickel or quarter size circumference of what the head of cauliflower feels like. So it felt like that underneath my finger and I touched it. I was like, what the hell?
[00:39] Michelle Fischler: I'm Michelle Fischler, certified sex therapist, and this is GETSOME. This season, I want to talk about men, what they're told they should be, and what happens in bed when they can't be it. Would you date someone with herpes? Or would it be a deal breaker? Courtney Brame was 23 when he woke up one morning, looked at his penis, and felt something that wasn't there the night before.
[01:06] Courtney Brame: You get the diagnosis, and then the verdict is that my sex life is over. No one's going to want to be with me, no one's going to want to be in a relationship with me.
[01:16] Courtney Brame: Nobody's going to want to have sex with me.
[01:18] Michelle Fischler: He found herpes support groups online.
[01:20] Courtney Brame: I'm having conversations with people about something that is not talked about.
[01:25] Michelle Fischler: He started asking people if they'd share their story.
[01:28] Courtney Brame: Who is really asking people with herpes about their experience? Everyone tells us what to do. take this medication, read this pamphlet, don't have sex during outbreaks, wear condoms, right? Like we get that and no one is asking us how we're feeling. So it became more important to curate that kind of space for people to be able to be asked, well, what do you need?
[01:53] Michelle Fischler: In 2017, that became a non-profit and podcast called Something Positive for Positive People.
[02:00] Courtney Brame: I talked to so many people who won't tell people, who don't tell people, and then the people who eventually do tell someone, they're so glad that they did it.
[02:10] Michelle Fischler: For many of them, Courtney was the first person who made them feel safe enough to say the truth out loud.
[02:16] Courtney Brame: Vulnerability is a muscle. It's kind of like going to the gym. You tear down that muscle by doing it, and it gets a little bit lighter or you get a little bit stronger with it.
[02:26] Michelle Fischler: Nearly a billion people worldwide have genital herpes, one in five adults. Most don't know they have it because often these infections can cause no or few symptoms.
[02:40] Courtney Brame: The reality is like, hot people get herpes. Many of us who have had sex with more than six people, statistically speaking, on the low end, have already come into skin contact with someone who has herpes. It's likely to have happened.
[02:56] Michelle Fischler: If you've ever carried a diagnosis and wondered if anyone would want you again, this one's for you.
[03:04] Courtney Brame: So I always tell my partners, like, hey, you know, you gotta like me more than you don't want herpes. And I don't know what it is. I think there's a little bit of confidence in that, that like maybe makes that a little bit more attractive to where people are like, oh shit, like this is worth the risk.
[03:18] Michelle Fischler: Here's my conversation with Courtney Brame.
[03:21] Michelle Fischler: And what was life like before your diagnosis?
[03:26] Courtney Brame: Oh, the good old days. So I got diagnosed with genital herpes at age, I want to say I was 23 or 24. And the way that life in general was for me was it was very chasey to say the least because at that time I had just finished college. I think I was out of college for maybe a year. I had always played sports. And at this point, it's like you go into adulthood.
[03:56] Courtney Brame: And so not only was I transitioning into adulthood, but also there was this sexual trauma that was introduced into my life, essentially, that shaped how I connected, that shaped how I dated, that shaped my perception of myself and my confidence and self-esteem. So, I think that that awareness of a change made me not just value what I had previously more than I ever had, but it made me look at it and go, oh, this actually wasn't working.
[04:30] Courtney Brame: I think that I had a lot of shame around my desire, I had a lot of shame around asking for what I want, and I think that I went very covert ways around getting what I wanted. So, using sex and conversations around sex as an example, having herpes made it to where I needed to talk about sexual health, which inherently led to conversations about pleasure as well,
[04:53] Courtney Brame: Whereas prior to my diagnosis, I think that I was supposed to know what to do. I was supposed to know everything. There were a lot of assumptions that the man is supposed to just know and that sex was to be done to the woman, not something that we did together. And a lot of those views really shaped the way, not just that I had sex, but how I went about getting sex in this like roundabout way of trying to use subtle communication.
[05:26] Courtney Brame: And I think that what getting herpes taught me was just how to be more direct.
[05:32] Michelle Fischler: Well, you talked about a trauma.
[05:34] Courtney Brame: Yeah.
[05:35] Michelle Fischler: Is that connected to the diagnosis?
[05:39] Courtney Brame: A hundred percent, yeah. So I don't think people look at an STI diagnosis as a sexual trauma, especially if it's something that is incurable because this is an event that now creates this lens in which you're going to view life differently than previous to that event. I think when I say the word sexual trauma, people immediately think sexual assault, they think abuse, they think physical harm being done by another person. Whereas this is a psychological trauma of, okay, now I have this diagnosis,
[06:13] Courtney Brame: All of what I believe about a person who has herpes, everything that's stigma related is now me, this is now who I am. And that's what I mean by the sexual trauma piece. So getting the first signs of symptoms and going down that road of thinking and then actually getting the physical diagnosis, that's the trauma that I speak of.
[06:37] Michelle Fischler: Take me to the moment you were diagnosed. What happened? What was going on for you?
[06:42] Courtney Brame: All right, so I had graduated college. I got my first big boy job. I started making a salary and I was living with my grandmother. Like I had just moved back from college. I moved in with my grandmother while I was going through that process. And I thought that my life was about to be on the trajectory of, I'm gonna tell you this, Michelle, I wanted five kids. And I'm so glad that me then didn't get what I thought that I wanted now.
[07:10] Courtney Brame: I don't know how I was gonna get five kids with, I was making 29,000 something dollars a year at that first big boy job.
[07:17] Michelle Fischler: Or maybe you wanted to make five kids.
[07:19] Courtney Brame: Well, and that's the thing. Cause I'm the oldest of five, but I'm technically, I'm my parents only child together. So there's like the, it's very complex between like being their only child and then they both had two other children separately. So I think that I've always kind of felt like an only child because I'm also the oldest, right?
[07:40] Courtney Brame: And there was such a disconnect from high school, college, and the age gaps that my siblings all had from me. And so I think that was really what fueled us. Like I want five kids and I want them all to be with the same person and all of that stuff. But, I woke up one morning, and I was a little bit hot,
[08:00] Courtney Brame: I was cold, I stumbled to the restroom, and when I got into the restroom, I didn't feel any physical symptoms on my genitals, but when I grabbed my penis to go pee, it felt like what can best be described as about a nickel or a quarter size circumference of what the head of cauliflower feels like. So it felt like that underneath my finger. I touched it, I was like, what the hell?
[08:24] Michelle Fischler: And that happened overnight?
[08:26] Courtney Brame: Overnight, yeah. I had nothing going to bed. I couldn't even tell you what happened the night before, but I tell you everything that happened the next morning. I was hot, I was cold, I was sweaty.
[08:36] Courtney Brame: And when I stumbled into the restroom and I peed, I felt it on my finger before feeling any symptoms. I didn't feel any itchiness or irritation or anything until I touched it and then I saw it. And then it was just like a tingling sensation. And so my grandmother, who, she's a nurse, she heard me yell what the f-word really loud, and then she knocked on the door and asked if I was okay.
[09:00] Courtney Brame: I was like, no, I need to go to the doctor right now.
[09:03] Michelle Fischler: Oh, so like your grandmother, was she aware of what was happening during the whole process?
[09:09] Courtney Brame: I didn't say anything at that point. Like right then I was just like, I need to go to the doctor. Yeah. And there wasn't any questions until I got back from the doctor. And yeah, I just explained to her and my mom, cause my mom ended up driving me to the doctor and it was like, yeah, the doctor said, it looks like herpes.
[09:24] Courtney Brame: And they were ready to fight. They were ready to find out who gave it to me and go, they were like, who did this to my baby?
[09:32] Michelle Fischler: Oh my gosh. Wow. When you reflect back on that experience of really not being alone with it for too long, right? like having that trauma shared with really important people in your life, was that helpful for you?
[09:52] Courtney Brame: 100%, because I talk to so many people who won't tell people, who don't tell people, and then the people who eventually do tell someone, they're so glad that they did it.
[10:01] Courtney Brame: And over the years of talking to people with herpes, interviewing people with herpes, the main reason that I do this is because consistently we see about a third of people struggle with suicide ideation when they take our surveys or when we have conversations,
[10:15] Courtney Brame: And I have learned that that suicide ideation comes from an invalidation of identity.
[10:24] Courtney Brame: So who a person believes themself to be versus who they are is consistently invalidated. And so when I talk to people, I offer some sense of validation to who they are, but I don't know them. I'm a stranger on the internet and maybe there's this parasocial relationship where they feel like they know me a lot more than they actually do. So they feel more comfortable and being vulnerable sharing with me the things that I wish that they would be able to tell the people closest to them, because these are the people who can remind them who they were pre-diagnosis, who can say, well, hey, you know, nothing's changed about how I view you.
[11:05] Courtney Brame: And I think that that's the most healing thing because right out the gate, my mom, my grandmother, these were the first two people that knew and they didn't treat me any different. They didn't look at me any differently. They didn't talk to me any differently. They were there for me and wanted to know what I needed.
[11:21] Michelle Fischler: Who did you not want to tell?
[11:25] Courtney Brame: I would say the next person I dated. Oh, that was, that was tough because there was always like, how are people going to receive this? Who's going to want to date someone with herpes? I remember thinking that my genitals would look like that forever. And after taking the medication for three days, it looked like nothing ever happened. And I was so surprised by that, because that was something that I didn't expect.
[11:50] Courtney Brame: I expected to always have that lesion and that I wouldn't be able to comfortably have sex anymore. No one said that that comes and goes. It's just if you have herpes, that's it. You have it forever. And that's that. And so once I started to notice those things, it was like, oh, okay, great.
[12:08] Courtney Brame: So this isn't always there, but I can always pass it on. So now having a conversation and needing to tell someone, hey, I have herpes, you know, the very next person that I would want to have any kind of a relationship with, that's who I was most afraid of telling.
[12:33] Michelle Fischler: In 1982, Time magazine ran a cover story calling herpes the new scarlet letter. By the time you were diagnosed in 2013, infection rates had been falling for two decades.
[12:46] Michelle Fischler: What did it feel like to inherit the stigma that was never actually about you? It was leftover panic from a moment you weren't even born for.
[13:00] Courtney Brame: Inheriting the stigma felt embarrassing. That's the word that comes to mind because I didn't want to be known as a person who was giving people herpes. When I first got the news, I did check in with my most recent sexual partners and I just asked, do you have herpes? And everyone said, no.
[13:21] Courtney Brame: And so for me, what happened was that embarrassment was alleviated because there was the potential for embarrassment and I could have just, you know, festered in that like, oh my God, I can't tell anybody. It's so embarrassing. But I just went straight and just asked, hey, do you have herpes? Yes or no. And everybody told me no.
[13:38] Courtney Brame: So there was nobody to point the finger at. There was no one that I had infected and I'm using air quotes when I say infected because of that terminology. But yeah, I alleviated the embarrassment right then and there. And that was the core thing that I felt was like it was embarrassing to have herpes and it would be more embarrassing to be known as someone who's giving people herpes.
[14:01] Michelle Fischler: It's mind blowing because chickenpox and mono are both herpes viruses too. They're in the same viral family, but nobody seems to be ashamed of having had chickenpox and what makes genital herpes such an easy shame target?
[14:20] Courtney Brame: Sex. I think that it's the association with sex. I remember one of my first podcast interviews I did was with a doctor who owns an urgent care. And I asked him, what's the difference between HSV-1 and HSV-2? He looked me dead in the face. He took his glasses off. He says, Courtney, the only difference between HSV-1 and HSV-2, I'll tell you this, it.
[14:42] Courtney Brame: Was like they both present the same. They are treated by the same medications and they behave the same. And the only difference is that nobody wants to associate children with an STD. That's it. You know, type one, it's cold sores. You got it as a kid. You got it from your family. They just kissed you.
[15:01] Courtney Brame: But then if it appears on your genitals, regardless if you have a sexual partner in adulthood in a consensual relationship where oral sex is performed and now you have genital herpes, Now, because of the association with sexual contact, that's where the shame comes in. And I believe that sex is really what’s stigmatized and that herpes is therefore secondarily stigmatized because of the way that society does or does not talk about sex. Like if it was nonconsensual, make that the issue. If people weren't informed about it previously, make that the issue. but don't demonize herpes in general or people having herpes when there are people in healthy, loving relationships that are discordant, which means that one person has it, the other person doesn't.
[15:50] Courtney Brame: There are people who are informing their partners and initiating discussions about sexual health and giving them the choice and giving them that information. And people are willingly engaging in relationships with people who have herpes. And these are the things that aren't being highlighted.
[16:17] Michelle Fischler: I keep thinking that there is the diagnosis and then there is this verdict that people hand themselves afterwards. What does that verdict usually sound like in someone's own head?
[16:33] Courtney Brame: You get the diagnosis and then the verdict is that my sex life is over.
[16:38] Courtney Brame: And I often challenge people, I ask, no, say more, like what does that really mean? What are you really trying to say? And it starts with my sex life is over to,
[16:49] Courtney Brame: No one's gonna wanna be with me. No one's gonna wanna be in a relationship with me.
[16:54] Courtney Brame: And then ultimately when we drill it down, it usually comes down to, nobody's gonna wanna have sex with me. And now it's like, okay, well, what's the issue with that? And why are you saying that? How do you know that? I'm a yoga therapist in training. I should be done at the end of this year, fingers crossed.
[17:11] Courtney Brame: But my practice of yoga has taught me the Yamas and Niyamas, which are essentially the ethical guidelines of living an aligned life. And one of those is Satya, which is truthfulness. So I try and get people to get to the truth of what it is that they're saying because my.
[17:29] Courtney Brame: Sex life is over is not true.
[17:31] Courtney Brame: No one's going to want to have sex with me again is not true.
[17:34] Courtney Brame: And so I have to support them in getting to what the real statement is there when it comes down to that verdict. We get the diagnosis and then we make a definitive statement. The only definitive statement is that now most people that I've spoken to are uncomfortable with the idea of now having to have a conversation about sexual health that was never relevant previously.
[17:58] Courtney Brame: And when that's not the case, it's okay, I need to tell my partner this and I'm worried that they're gonna leave. Then if it's not that, it's I just got back out into the dating world after a relationship ended that I stayed in because of this diagnosis, so now I've got all this history that I have this experience with my diagnosis, and now I have to navigate that and then begin to tell myself a new truth,
[18:23] Courtney Brame: Because that's the thing.
[18:24] Courtney Brame: We lie to ourselves. We internalize this stigma that comes from people who have no idea what it's like to have herpes or don't have it themselves, and that's what becomes who we are and unchallenged, that will be true, but it doesn't have to be true.
[18:42] Michelle Fischler: I was watching your podcast, and you were talking about how you've come up with a metaphor for your experience, thinking of the body as an apartment complex with things like herpes as tenants, your immune system manages, not eliminates. Where did that image come from for you and how does it help people understand what you're going through?
[19:19] Courtney Brame: That imagery comes from an understanding of, uh, essentially like, here's the picture, right? Like, uh, Osmosis Jones. Have you ever seen that cartoon?
[19:32] Courtney Brame: Okay. So Osmosis Jones is essentially about the inside of a person's body and the immune system is like keeping things under control. So we're not like ridding ourselves of things because it's, we're an ecosystem.
[19:46] Courtney Brame: Like our entire body, we have gut bacteria, right? We get colds and it just, we just have to wait it out. And it's essentially, our body just needs to sit down and rest, right? So we host bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi in healthy amounts. When things get out of control and there's a constant reproduction, I just picture that everything's fucking and creating waste.
[20:11] Courtney Brame: So it's reproducing out of control and it's creating a lot of waste because it's eating and it's shitting and that's where the toxins come in. We get inflammation and we find out, oh, there's something happening with my body. I need to do something about it. So in healthy and normal amounts, right? Essentially, these things are just living within us. And if we are, this body is the apartment complex and a tenant is unhappy. Any.
[20:38] Courtney Brame: Metaphor that I give is, let's say it's hot as hell in your New York apartment and the air conditioner goes out.
[20:47] Courtney Brame: So the air conditioner goes out and we need the air conditioner on for herpes in unit 1A, the first thing he's going to do is maybe send an email, hey, our air conditioner is out, put in a service request. Okay, let's say you're not paying attention to your body, you the landlord, the superintendent, the leasing office, you're not there.
[21:06] Courtney Brame: So now they're going to call, now they're leaving voice messages, right? So these are the early warning signs. Maybe you get a little tingle sensation at this point, but eventually what's going to happen is they're going to knock on the door of the leasing office And if you're not there to catch that now, rent's not getting paid. Now it's looking for a new place to stay.
[21:26] Courtney Brame: Bam outbreak. This is how herpes spreads. So if you're not in tune with your body, your nervous system, if you're not taking care of your health and able to catch the early warning signs of whatever your trigger may be, it can be a busy time of year. There can be a person in your life that you don't have any business interacting with.
[21:46] Courtney Brame: There can be circumstances that are happening that are just stressing you out. It could even be something that you're eating. It can be that you're not sleeping well. These are very early warning signs that if we are present and we are just checking in with ourselves, these can maybe be prevented. I don't wanna speak in an absolute there,
[22:07] Courtney Brame: But ever since making it a consistent practice, I can't say daily, but most days I do yoga. I check in with my breathing. I've been telling over the last few days, I tell the women in my support group, unclench your butthole. Everybody laughs about it, but it's like you won't realize how we walk around with tight asses and that's tension that is constricting the flow of energy and life force that runs through us.
[22:37] Courtney Brame: So remembering that and trying to make more space for being in a relaxed state is something that the nervous system is asking us to do because we are under a lot of tension. We do put a lot of pressure on ourselves, even with shame. Like shame essentially has us in like this chokehold and we're just tight.
[22:59] Michelle Fischler: What language do you wish people would retire?
[23:02] Courtney Brame: Violent language. Any violent language as it relates to stigma and violent can be an aggressive word but when we talk about disease, when we talk about prevent, when we talk about safety, when we talk about protection, using those kinds of words, I can't prevent somebody from getting herpes.
[23:21] Courtney Brame: So when we talk about STD, STI prevention, I'm left out of that conversation. I cannot keep a person from getting herpes from me. I can do what I can to minimize the possibility. I can wear condoms. I can make sure that I'm not having sex during outbreaks. If a partner and I negotiate that taking antivirals consistently is something that works for us, then we can do that. But it's still a possibility.
[23:50] Courtney Brame: So I always tell my partners, like, hey, you got to like me more than you don't want herpes. And I don't know what it is. I think that there's something, there's like a little bit of confidence in that, that like maybe makes that a little bit more attractive to where people are like, oh shit, like this is worth the risk.
[24:06] Courtney Brame: And to my knowledge, I've not passed herpes on to any of my partners. I think that for where I'm at in life, someone would have been like, hey, it actually happened. What do I need to do?
[24:18] Michelle Fischler: How does language like clean versus dirty and other kinds of STI stigma show up in even sex positive spaces?
[24:27] Courtney Brame: The clean and dirty is a good one. I remember on Craigslist, the DDF, drug and disease free, that's still happening on sex positive dating apps as well. And the way that people are talking about their sexual health status very much communicates to you where they are stigma-wise, right?
[24:47] Courtney Brame: Because going back to the shame piece, in swinger communities especially, there's an assumption that no one's going to show up to the party with an STI. If they have an STI, they're not going to show up. So what does that mean for a person who has been in that mindset, who now gets herpes and stop showing up to play parties.
[25:08] Courtney Brame: Now they have to navigate the, where have you been? We haven't seen you in a while. What's going on? We want to hook up. And now they have to like risk losing their community or having this conversation and possibly losing their community or losing their ability to connect. And this is one of the things where.
[25:25] Courtney Brame: Our sexuality is very much interwoven into our identity to where when a person gets this, it's not, I have this, I am this.
[25:33] Courtney Brame: And it can cut off our access to, in some people's circumstances, their work. And in some people's circumstances, their community, their social life, their ability to connect, because maybe they are only able to form sexual relationships and connections. So now if I have to share this thing that I've used, my sexuality, to get resources and into relationships and to get sex and to have an experience of connection and community, this is now tainted or now presents a challenge that I may not be able to have access to these things anymore.
[26:08] Courtney Brame: Now we've got this inner conflict around, do I share this information with someone? Do I not share this information? Do I just run away? Do I avoid it entirely? Who's safe? Are there even safe people around me for me to be able to share this with? And these are all of the thoughts that someone who is diagnosed with herpes may navigate. And especially in sex positive spaces where sex is the common interest.
[26:35] Courtney Brame: So now if sex comes with the possibility of an STI diagnosis or STI transmission, now it's like, well, damn, what do I have to contribute to the community if not sex?
[26:47] Michelle Fischler: What did sexual worthiness look like the first time you felt it again?
[26:56] Courtney Brame: I've been thinking about her a lot lately, but sexual worthiness to me, that was the first person, I think I might've been 24 or 25 years old. And this was after my herpes diagnosis.
[27:08] Courtney Brame: And this was the first openly queer woman that I had dated. And for perspective, she was just like a free-spirited hippie chick that worked at Whole Foods. So I was just like enthralled, and I think that that kind of set the stage for the kind of energy that I feel drawn and attracted to, because there was no judgment. There was safety. There was, hey, you know that thing that you've been ashamed of, that I can sense that you've been ashamed of?
[27:37] Courtney Brame: Let that shit go. Not here. It just opened the floodgates for experimentation and exploration. So that was the collection of experiences that set me free.
[27:58] Michelle Fischler: Will you do a role play with me?
[28:00] Courtney Brame: Yeah, let's do it.
[28:01] Michelle Fischler: Imagine we're going on our second date. Our first date, it was amazing. We didn't like go up to each other's places. We just made out.
[28:13] Courtney Brame: What kind of date is this? I'm just kidding.
[28:16] Michelle Fischler: We're pretty clear that the second date, we were gonna maybe take it a step further.
[28:21] Michelle Fischler: So we go on the second date, had an amazing time, and I say to you, hey, do you wanna come up to my place?
[28:31] Courtney Brame: Hell yeah.
[28:32] Michelle Fischler: At what point, like say we get up to my place and we're just like hanging out on the couch, we're talking, kissing, it's clear that we're gonna be moving to the bedroom. Where does the conversation come up?
[28:44] Courtney Brame: All right, so there's two, I wanna do the before herpes, Courtney, and then the post-Herpes Courtney, pre-Herpes Courtney. Do I need this condom?
[28:53] Courtney Brame: And that was the extent of the conversation about sexual health, because essentially, what I was taught about STIs in middle school when I was taught about them was that they stink, they hurt, and you would be able to see them if someone had one. So it's like, who's going to want to have sex if they have an STI?
[29:13] Courtney Brame: So really the condom was about pregnancy prevention. So that, do I need this, was really, are you on birth control? And the response would generally be, I'm not on birth control, right? So now I know, okay, great. And now we start whatever the process is for sex. Post-Herpes Courtney, after years of experience and trial and error and getting to this point, all right, hey, you know, We're clearly about to take things to the next level.
[29:45] Courtney Brame: Are you in a place right now? I know we've been kissing and everything. We had a little bit to drink. Do you feel like we can talk about our sexual health?
[29:53] Michelle Fischler: Yes, I find that hot.
[29:55] Courtney Brame: So here's the thing about that question, right? If we're on our second date, we're making out, like our blood flow is not where it needs to be, maybe to have that conversation, right? Yeah, right, right? So there can also be like alcohol involved. Maybe there's other substances that could be involved. So these are the things to consider, right?
[30:14] Courtney Brame: Like going into that kind of conversation, we can't really have that conversation because if we are super turned on and I tell you, all right, hey, I got herpes. You're like, I don't give a fuck. Just fuck me, Courtney. Right. And now the next day I'm speaking to this because it's happened before.
[30:29] Courtney Brame: So now like I know, okay, this will never happen again. So next day now it's, oh my God, do I have it? did we wear a condom, did this, you know, and now we're in those conversations. So the reason that I'm asking you if you're in a place to have that conversation is to know that we can actually have it.
[30:49] Michelle Fischler: What if I said, not now, let's just keep going.
[30:54] Courtney Brame: All right, so if we keep going, Courtney pre this point would probably be like, all right, we'll just fuck around. We'll fool around, right, there won't be intercourse. So we can do everything that isn't penis and vagina sex, right? So if I have to wear a condom for oral sex, then that would probably have been one of the routes that could be gone.
[31:19] Courtney Brame: But if that were to happen, I would push back a little bit and be like, nah, we should talk about this now. Just like, I care about my sexual health and I care about the sexual health of my sexual partner. So like, you know, let's take a little break or here's where the limitation is.
[31:38] Courtney Brame: We can make out, but that's it until we have that conversation.
[31:41] Michelle Fischler: Yeah.
[31:41] Courtney Brame: That's what I want to think I would say.
[31:45] Michelle Fischler: Yeah, no, I think, and I obviously can't speak for everybody out there. And this really feels like I'm really connected to this is that when somebody is willing to take care of you and also to take care of their own body, that is a turn on. It's sexy. It starts to build trust. Now, when I talk with clients about this and we have this conversation, it takes quite a while to get that buy-in from them, but eventually it starts to sink in. And what does someone need to feel or believe before telling a partner stops feeling terrifying?
[32:35] Courtney Brame: They need to see themselves as more than just what's between their legs. So mathematically, I think most people in adulthood have had a geometry class. We can agree that there are 360 degrees in the circle. Is that right? Can we agree to that?
[32:49] Michelle Fischler: Yes.
[32:50] Courtney Brame: Okay.
[32:50] Michelle Fischler: I agree.
[32:51] Courtney Brame: So that's a whole circle. Erving Goffman defines stigma as a mark or attribute that makes a person feel less than whole.
[33:00] Courtney Brame: So if we're using the whole definition of a circle, we've got 360 degrees. Let's say each of those degrees is a person's perception of us or how we receive or perceive ourselves and an identity or a role or a thing about us. Herpes is one of those degrees. So, if we're locked into that one degree, we have to understand that there are 359 or more aspects of who we are that a person needs to be able to experience before making a decision.
[33:34] Courtney Brame: Because if all you're doing is showing up to the date and you're like, oh my God, I have to tell this person I have herpes. How am I going to tell them? When am I going to tell them? How are they going to receive it? Will they reject me? Are they going to hate me for it? Are they going to throw a drink in my face? If we think that we're not able to be present and the date will have gone by and that person will have felt completely disconnected from you because you've just been in your head.
[33:55] Courtney Brame: So what I think a person needs to realize is that there's so much more to us. Maybe we're funny, maybe we're intelligent, right? These are like some of the things that people say that make people show up on a second date, maybe charming, sexy, dresses well, smells good, is polite to the people that are providing whatever services on our date, right?
[34:17] Courtney Brame: Accommodating, kind, that's like nine things that I named right there. If you show up and you're not present enough to be any of those nine things, and you just show up as a person with herpes, who's like, oh my God, okay, I have to tell this person I have herpes. Hell yeah, I reject you too, and I have herpes because you're not showing me anything else to compare it to, right?
[34:38] Courtney Brame: Because now if a person who doesn't have herpes is on a date with someone and it's, hey, I have herpes, are you okay with that? I'm now depending on you to decide how I'm gonna feel as I come away from this interaction. That's heavy. And that's also nothing else for them to compare to. All they know about you is that you're a person who showed up that there's some physical attraction to that has herpes,
[35:01] Courtney Brame: That's it. So we have to be willing and able to know that we are more than our diagnosis and be able to show up in a way that expresses that.
[35:09] Michelle Fischler: You’ve said there are really only three ways someone can respond to disclosure: “No, thanks,” “Me too,” or “Tell me more.” And the odds of an outright rejection are only about one in three. Why do you think most people assume it’s so much worse than that?
[35:31] Courtney Brame: Because we put ourselves in the position of the other person and who we were prior to our knowledge and we assume that everyone's in that place. So if someone were to tell me that they have herpes and I don't have it, I'm gonna be like, no. That's what I think people think and believe. And also there's this perception of what a person who has herpes looks like or what they behave like.
[35:57] Courtney Brame: But the reality is like, hot people get herpes. And if you're attractive and you have options and you're exploring those options, or if you're dating or you're sexually active, it's very likely that you'll have at least come into contact with someone who has come into contact with herpes. Whether that person has tested positive or has had symptoms or not,
[36:19] Courtney Brame: Many of us who have had sex with more than six people, statistically speaking, on the low end, have already come into skin contact with someone who has herpes. Whether it be oral, genital, or if it's HSV-1 or if it's HSV-2, whatever the combination structure of the statistic, it's likely to have happened.
[36:40] Courtney Brame: So it's more realistic for us to be able to engage with someone who is more curious about it. And also thinking about the quality of person that we're dating, right? I want to date someone who's curious. I don't want to date someone who's judgmental, who's going to show up to the date if I present some information to them and they're like, nope,
[37:00] Courtney Brame: No thanks.
[37:01] Courtney Brame: So how a person navigates even that conversation with curiosity versus just judgment, like, oh, you got that? Oh, I know somebody who has that. I'm not dealing with it because that means that you're gonna do this thing. And even that is stigmatizing.
[37:15] Michelle Fischler: You train professionals around stigma-informed care. What do providers often underestimate about the moment they deliver a diagnosis?
[37:25] Courtney Brame: Adding emotion to it. So if we can neutralize the language, If we can get away with just not saying unfortunately, I remember there was a post on social media from a medical professional who was commenting on a video, hey, this happened and now I'm going to comment on it. And he says herpes is incurable unfortunately.
[37:47] Courtney Brame: The unfortunately was so unnecessary and it's little language things like that. So often less is more. Why does it need to have any charge to it? Because the client, the patient, is already coming in emotionally charged and they're looking for some grounding. You can't ground them by offering more of a charge.
[38:09] Courtney Brame: So if we're talking about a person who's diagnosed with herpes or they're having symptoms or their experience is what it is, just talk to them about that. If you're delivering a diagnosis, all right, hey, so this looks like herpes. What questions do you have?
[38:24] Courtney Brame: And then just asking that, like, what do you need?
[38:27] Courtney Brame: Because people are so quick to tell us, like, do this, take these, read this, right? Ask me, what do I need right now? Maybe I need to know how to tell a partner about this. Maybe I need to know who I should tell about this. Maybe I need to know how this is going to affect me in terms of dating and relationships.
[38:48] Courtney Brame: Or maybe I don't care. And you ask me, what questions do you have? And I'm like, Uh, I don't have any, actually. I'm gonna just do some research at home. Do you have anything that I can read, right? So rather than just offering and assuming, let's ask people what it is that they feel like they need and let's remove the unnecessary emotional charge from the language.
[39:09] Michelle Fischler: What is the harm in trying to reassure someone too quickly with it's not the end of the world?
[39:17] Courtney Brame: The harm is that it invalidates a person's experience. It invalidates their identity because the reality is that this is the end of a world. It may not be the end of the world, but it's the end of their world. And so the way that they know it, they don't have a lens for what sex, dating, relationships, companionship, community, socializing is going to look like moving forward.
[39:42] Courtney Brame: They only know what has happened up to this point. And they know that they've been able to have sex, get into relationships because of their negative health status or their ignorance to their health status. And ethically there's this line of, fuck, now I have herpes. I have to tell people this, or I should tell people this, or I refuse to tell people this, or I'm not going to tell people this.
[40:09] Courtney Brame: And there's the navigation of those thought processes that can happen.
[40:13] Michelle Fischler: For someone diagnosed this week, what is one thing they can do tonight?
[40:22] Courtney Brame: Tell somebody. Tell somebody that you trust, share with them that you're going through something. I know that when we're diagnosed, it's very difficult to want to tell a person, I have herpes. So thinking about it from the perspective of if you had a breakup, if you lost your job, if someone passed away, if any of these things that would have a psychological impact on you feel like things that you would need support for, what makes this any different?
[40:53] Courtney Brame: So finding a person that is close to you, who knows you, that you trust to be able to support you, if this is someone that you would tell any of those things to, this should also be someone that you can say, hey, I'm struggling with this. I have herpes, I just found out, and I don't know what to do next. And allow for that person to support you, allow for that person to surprise you.
[41:16] Courtney Brame: And if you don't have somebody like that, then I mean, you can reach out to Something Positive for Positive People for support, but I'm going to tell you the same thing on our support call. If that's, like, I'm gonna tell you, the best thing you can do for yourself is talk to someone who knows you and is close to you.
[41:33] Courtney Brame: That is the best advice and guidance that I can give to anybody because that's how we have our identity validated outside of how we view ourselves as people with herpes.
[41:44] Michelle Fischler: Courtney, where would you like people to find you?
[41:48] Courtney Brame: I would say go to the website, www.spfpp.org. I'm on Instagram at my first and last name. It's just Courtney Brame, but.
[42:01] Courtney Brame: I don't know how to describe my engagement with Instagram. I try and be a real person on there and living my life out loud in a way that if people are diagnosed, they can just see, oh, here's this normal-ass person that's sharing the experiences of normal-ass people,
[42:18] Courtney Brame: Whatever normal means, because I think I'm weird. It takes a very weird person to do what it is that I do. I don't know that there's any normalcy in my life, to be completely honest, but the way that I look, sometimes the way that I sound, the things that I do, these are things that resonate with people and make them feel connected to so that they can go on and see themselves in a way that is not the lens of their own diagnosis and their perception of themselves.
[42:45] Courtney Brame: So those are the two main places.
[42:49] Michelle Fischler: Courtney thank you so much.
[42:53] Courtney Brame: Thank you.
[42:57] Michelle Fischler: If you have a story that you want to tell on GETSOME, email me at michelle@getsome.ca. Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram at getsome_podcast. You’ll get insights on sex and sexuality, dating tips, and behind-the-scenes content between episodes. This show is produced by Katie Jensen at Vocal Fry Studios. Thanks for listening. See you later.