About HSV Circle
HSV Circle publishes practical writing about living with HSV — disclosure, dating, relationships, and finding other people who have been through it. That means a directory of verified herpes support groups and plain-language guides for the conversations that follow a diagnosis. It is run by a small editorial team, published under a team byline rather than individual names.
Who this is for
People who have tested positive for HSV-1 or HSV-2 and are trying to work out what happens next — practically, not medically. That includes finding a group where other people understand the situation, working out how and when to tell a partner, and the ordinary questions about dating and relationships that follow a diagnosis and that most clinical pages do not go anywhere near.
If you are looking for medical information, this is the wrong site, and we say so throughout: nothing here is medical advice, and we are not clinicians. The CDC, Planned Parenthood, and the American Sexual Health Association all publish accurate clinical material, and we link to them rather than restating it.
What we do not do
This matters more than what we do, so it goes near the top.
- We do not diagnose. We cannot tell you what a symptom means, what a test result means, or whether you have anything at all.
- We do not give medical advice or recommend treatment. No medication guidance, no home remedies, no claims about reducing viral load.
- We do not tell you when something is safe. No calculator, no probability, no reassurance we are not in a position to give. Transmission risk depends on factors that a clinician has to assess with you.
- We do not tell you what the law requires. Disclosure obligations vary by jurisdiction. We write about how to have the conversation, not whether you are legally required to have it.
- We do not sell a cure, a test, or a treatment.
- We are not a dating app, and there is nobody to browse here. We write about dating and relationships with HSV because that is what people are actually dealing with after a diagnosis. There are no profiles, no matching, and no members — if that ever changes it will be obvious, and we are not going to hint at it in the meantime to seem bigger than we are.
Where the information comes from
Three different kinds of claim appear on this site, and we label them differently:
Clinical facts are attributed to a named public health body, with the date we checked the source. We summarise and link; we do not paraphrase medical guidance into something stronger than the original said.
Support group listings are checked by hand before they are published. Each entry records the date it was verified and how. A listing that has not been re-checked in 90 days is marked as needing re-verification rather than shown as currently open — a directory of groups that no longer meet is worse than no directory.
Everything else — how to open a conversation, what tends to help — is editorial judgment based on what people in this situation actually report finding useful. It is labelled as our view, not as research.
Where we could not find a reliable source, we say that instead of filling the gap.
Why a team byline
One editorial team publishes everything here, and articles are signed that way rather than with invented individual authors. We are not clinicians and do not claim clinical credentials. Naming a fictional expert would be easy and would make this site look more authoritative than it is; a team byline points at the people actually responsible.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, out of date, or reads badly, tell us and we will change it. Corrections are made on the page with the date noted, not quietly.
Support group listings go stale faster than anything else on the site. If a group has closed, moved, or started charging, that is the most useful thing you can report.