Stages of Genital Herpes – The Information You Need to Minimize Your Pain

Genital herpes sometimes causes severe symptoms, and sometimes causes no symptoms at all. If you understand the stages of genital herpes, you may be able to stop blistering, fever, and contagion even before they start. Here are seven important FAQ's.

  1. How does genital herpes start?

    2. Genital herpes, like oral herpes, retreats to nerve fibers to "hide" from the immune system between outbreaks. When the host body-such as your body-is under some kind of stress that might endanger the virus, it quickly multiplies and spreads along that nerve to the skin, or mucous membranes of the sex organ, so it can survive by infecting someone else. You can feel the effects of the moving of the virus through:

    • Tingling
    • Numbness
    • Itching, or
    • Burning

    even before there are any blisters.

  2. Where is the pain of genital herpes felt?

    3. Genital herpes is not strictly limited to the genitalia. The blistering caused by genital herpes can occur just about anywhere that would be covered by boxer shorts. There can be blisters almost to the navel, on the buttocks, on the anus (even without anal intercourse), on the buttocks, or on the thighs. Because of interconnections of the nerve fibers that host the virus, genital herpes can cause lower back pain or muscle pain in the buttocks, usually more severely just before the blisters form. You can have blisters without the generalized nerve pain, or generalized nerve pain without blisters.

  3. How long do the blisters last?

    4. The kind of virus that is causing the genital herpes makes a huge difference in how much the blisters hurt and how long the blisters last. If you get a genital infection with the "oral" form of the herpes simplex virus, HSV-1, then your blisters will probably heal in a few days. If you get a genital infection with the genital form of the herpes simplex virus, HSV-2, after you get HSV-1, then you probably will also heal in a few days. But if you get HSV-2 without any modifying factors, blisters may last 2 to 3 weeks and come back as soon as a month later.

  4. When is genital herpes contagious?

    5. Blisters contain the highest concentrations of the virus. It is possible to pass the virus before and after blisters form, and in "asymptomatic" outbreaks when the virus is being shed from the linings of the sex organs but there are not other symptoms. Technically, you can (and some people do) get herpes by having unprotected sex when your infected partner is not having any symptoms. However, you are 10 to 1000 times more likely to get or give an infection when you have contact with a blister than at any other time.

  5. If I've been infected once, can I ever get infected again?

    6. If you get a genital infection with HSV-2, you can get a second genital infection with HSV-1, and vice versa. The second infection is likely to be much less severe.

  6. If my partner and I both have the same kind of herpes in the same locations, is it OK to have unprotected sex?

    7. It's still not a good idea to have unprotected sex when one of you has recently had blisters (and having sex while blisters are active is too painful). And it's not a good idea to have unprotected sex unless you know that you have the same kind of herpes because you had a lab test for the specific herpes virus. This isn't a blood test. It's a tissue sample. But if you both have the same kind of herpes and neither of you is blistering, then sex won't cause a new infection.

Is there ever an end-stage of herpes? Is it ever fatal?

If you get HIV and develop AIDS, herpes can in fact be fatal. Having herpes makes it more likely that you will get HIV if you are ever exposed to it. But for most people who have healthy immune systems, herpes is a serious annoyance, not a crippling disease.

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