Two years ago, I was dating this guy that I got along with pretty well, but ultimately it never went anywhere and I moved on. 3 months later, I get the dreaded call that nobody wants to get. He leaves me the voicemail saying he has something urgent to talk to me about, and when I call him back he says he has herpes.
Only, he doesn't actually know if he has it, but his new girlfriend went to the gyno because she had painful sores and was diagnosed with it. So, he assumes he has it, and because all of this is fresh in his mind he wanted to call me the minute he found out to get me to go get tested immediately. So I basically freak all the way out. This new girlfriend seemed completely shy and reserved to me; she did not seem like "the type" to get an STD. I, on the other hand, was totally "the type." I'd dated and slept with more than a handful of men over the years. (Including that one sketchy guy senior year that claimed to make a living being a traveling poet) So I gave in to my paranoia and just assumed it was me and I had some dormant strain that had never given me symptoms or shown up on a pap smear but that I could still give to my ex and now his lovely new girlfriend.
I went to this lab test place that was open on the weekends (because this had to be done immediately!) and paid the $175 for a blood test. I waited 3 agonizing days and became obsessed with remembering every little blemish I might have ever had down there. When I get the test results in the mail, there's just a number, .33 and I just knew that because it wasn't zero it was positive for the herpes virus. I call the guy back and confirm his suspicions. I'm mortified, and he never speaks to me again.
A little while after the dust settled, I go to a real doctor with my results. They say that I have what people call mouth herpes and I had read the results wrong. I don't have the herp and it is safe to assume that new girlfriend had it all along afterall. But they were doing so great as a couple, and I was so humiliated for being dumb, that I just never called the guy to correct the story.
So now they are getting married! It's been like a year, so it's probably not too soon, but what if he only proposed because he thinks he gave her herpes and now she can never have sex with anyone else? Do I need to set the record straight and possibly ruin a marriage? Or just let him go ahead and marry a girl that told a little white lie but is otherwise perfect for him?