Article: I'm not promiscuous but my life has been blighted by an incurable sexual disease; As sexually transmitted diseases reach crisis levels, this woman talks candidly about spending half her life with herpes.

Byline: BONNIE ESTRIDGE

IT'S everyone's nightmare to be told they are suffering from a sexual disease. But Louisa Richardson discovered she had genital herpes just months after getting married. "When I found out I had the disease, from my first relationship, I felt that my world had ended," she says. When it was diagnosed, she waited nervously for her husband to return home, dreading his reaction. "What was I going to tell him? I really believed that this would end my marriage. I had the stigma of a sexually transmitted disease, which I had always believed was only caught by being promiscuous."

In fact she has only ever had three sexual relationships in ...

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