I believe that if you have an STD you should only date someone with an STD. Having a sexually transmitted disease is a private thing and is not something that you want to broadcast to the world. Although I'm not ashamed of having it, I did find it difficult at first when I found out that I had genital herpes.
By dating someone with a sexually transmitted disease you both share the same secret. I believe for privacy reasons that this is the best way to go. If you decide to try to date someone that doesn't have a sexually transmitted disease then you should make sure that you are very good friends first before you tell them. Even then they may reject you at which point you never know whom they might tell.
If it is someone at work that you are trying to date and you told them about your STD you know what the chances are that the whole office will eventually find out the minute you get on the bad side of that person or have a disagreement. Don't ever let this happen to you! Keep your job and be happy there.
This has never happened to me but I know several people who have lost their jobs over it. Not because they were fired for having an STD but because they were too ashamed to work around so many people that knew about their secret and would make constant digging comments about it.
With one in four adults having genital herpes, there was probably a very likely chance that many of the people who were in on that office joke actually had herpes but were not about to tell that that they did, so they went along with the joke. How much pain did they feel inside having to go along with such a joke knowing full well that it was indirectly aimed at them.
I have been fortunate enough to find a herpes STD dating website where not only people with herpes find dates but people with human papilloma virus, HIV, and other STD related diseases find dates too. One of the best things about STD dating websites is that they are very private and they don't allow any of the search engines to search their websites to collect photographs and put your dating profile online for the world to see.
Because of the privacy that STD web dating websites offer we no longer have to worry about the embarrassment of telling someone that we have an STD just to find that they reject you for that very reason and possibly ruin your life by telling everyone they know about it.
I gave up all of my other dating accounts and only date on a herpes dating website. I find that the stress of having to tell someone completely vanishes when both people already know about the other person. I won't go back to regular dating ever again.
