@anita

Thanks again for your helpful thoughts, appreciate it.

She did say more than once that my reaction to her herpes was unexpected and she hadn’t experienced that before and had been with people who were fine about it.  I guess I have to forgive myself and accept the fact that I was not one of those guys.

She would always tell me how in control I was and that me being direct made her feel safe and secure, she saw me as a man, a leader and I think I did indeed lead well throughout. There were a few times when she got emotional one week and she said how she admired my calmness. That changed with the herpes revelation. Maybe my reaction to it was too emotional for her and as a result she lost respect which in turn, eventually made her lose attraction as well. She no longer saw me as leadership potential perhaps. That’s when she started doubting the other aspects about me, like whether we’re compatible in other areas.

But then if this was the case, this is rather unfair, because all I was doing was to prove to her how much I did care and wanted to make this relationship work, despite the STD and anything else. When she first disconnected, she expressed that she didn’t feel accepted and doubted how happy I was with the relationship, so my intentional efforts in the last two weeks were to prove exactly that – that I was happy and wanted it to work. Which explains the chocolates I sent, the consistent texts, some verbal affection and more calls but yeah, I only got resistance where she was defensive and trying to find fault.  She was saying one thing, and then I tried my best to do exactly that. Perhaps she saw it as disingenuous as I said before because of how I was a bit distant myself after the revelation. She may have been like “does he really mean this or is he just afraid of losing me” “is this really genuine” Only she knows.

@helcat

There were a few other issues which she brought up like the spiritual compatibility and other vague stuff like how much we actually have in common and so on but I wonder if that was only triggered by this herpes issue. If I hadn’t reacted the way I did then perhaps these other unrelated areas would not have been addressed until much later. And who knows perhaps we would have found out that we were not right for each other anyway.

But yes the regret over how I reacted at the time is really what is keeping me up at night. I couldn’t help it at the time and I got stressed out.

@anita

Sorry I didn’t see your other message where you’ve actually asked some key questions.

You are not at all guilty for how you felt about her herpes. We don’t choose our emotionally reactions to unexpected situations.

Yes that’s right, like I said in my OP as well, I couldn’t help but react that way at the time and then later on too. I was trying to process everything.

 Hope that she didn’t reveal her condition to you in-person.

Ah here’s the thing – she did reveal in-person when we were spending a nice day together and then we started talking about our pasts.  And crucially, she also built up to it and I could sense anxiety and tension within her as she was about to say what it was.  In my mind I was like, I’ll accept whatever it was as I did really like her. When she mentioned it was herpes, obviously I was taken back but was gentle and tried to be understanding. She said it’s fine if that changes things, she’ll understand and also whether I now see her differently… And guess what happened, those two things did happen in the next coming days. Almost like a self fulfilling prophecy.

I knew about herpes and I know it’s not life threatening and a fairly harmless skin condition but other factors were at play too…like my image of her as this super feminine, traditional woman was kind of shattered and I know that’s awful way to think but that’s how I thought about it.

In 2-3 weeks after she told me I think she may have expected me to actually express my feelings about it or provide some kind of “update” on my “progress.”  Because I didn’t, she took that to mean I wasn’t happy and was struggling with the whole issue. And eventually she went a step further I guess, and thought I may never get over it and so shut down her feelings and checked out.  I just wish she had raised her concerns before she did this, not when it was basically too late.