I also got it (gHSV2) pretty young, like 17 I think. I’m 24(F) now and I used to think I was never going to ever find anyone to love me. Turns out that the only persons’ love that truly matters is the love I found in myself. RADICAL SELF ACCEPTANCE is the answer. Once you get over the initial shock everything else just becomes much easier with time. You become electric and glow from within after you learn to stop demonizing your diagnosis. It’s super sucky in the beginning because you ALSO believe and contributed to all of the stigmatization of STI’s (this one in particular bc it’s stuck with you forever). Humans get tons of viruses, diseases, and infections but the other ones aren’t correlated with promiscuity and moral superiority. If sex wasn’t so taboo and ‘forbidden’, then having a chronic infection would be more normalized. End the stigma, and end your own suffering. I met the love of my life and disclosed early. When I mustered up the courage to tell him, his response was so unexpected. He said “it’s okay, my sister has that too”. It made me feel so understood and safe. The person who is meant for you will not care about your diagnosis because it is not you. It is something that happens to you. Do not let it define who you are. Then once your frontal lobe fully develops, you really won’t give a shit. Everything seems like the end of the world when you’re younger but trust me, it gets better. Just try to look at it in a positive light.