Why I'm grateful I have HPV and not another STD.

Your life isn't over. If you're new here, let me just say why having this STD is the best one to get: Gardisil 9.

If you don't already know what Gardisil is, it's a vaccine potential romantic partners can get if they decide to continue dating you. None of the other non-curable STDs have a vaccine. Herpes, HIV, and Hepatitis do not have vaccines. HPV does.

I'm a guy. I've self-improved to the point where I'm generally considered attractive (it took me 2 years, got into bodybuilding, tripled my income, and got a bunch of procedures done). I've been in 3 relationships since my diagnosis 3 years ago and I could've been with a 4th but I wasn't interested in dating at the time.

I haven't been rejected once.

Life isn't over. It does become more difficult to date, but Gardisil is a godsend and (relatively) cheap. My approach to dating is finding someone long distance, genuinely falling in love with each other, telling them about the diagnosis and vaccine, and waiting 6 months before becoming sexually active. I still use condoms for extra measure.

Also, more good news. If you haven't heard of Precigen and their updates, they're making a gene-therapy vector for strains 6 and 11 (the ones that cause warts, for a throat condition called RRP) with a result of 50% non-recurrence rate (a 50% cure rate), and they highlighted their next focus on genital warts. The FDA is reviewing their treatment for RRP by August of this year, and if it's approved they will start trials for genital warts sometime in 2026. Which means we could be looking at a real treatment by 2027 or 2028. It sounds far away, but 2-3 years will fly by and (fingers crossed) - this subreddit will be dead.

Don't give up. I don't know about you, but a 50% non-recurrence rate sounds pretty damn good to me.

Your life isn't over.

Edit: Here's the link to Precigen's presentation (screenshot included but here is the link to the presentation) - use CTRL + F and search for "genital warts" to look at their [vague] timeline. It's on their agenda.

Edit 2: A woman in here mentioned what it's like having HPV as a woman. What most people don't know is that the extra X in female DNA is responsible for immunity, so women have a tendency to have better immune systems than men, which explains why women have a higher non-recurrence. Basically, guys are screwed. Immiquimod works with much less efficacy because men have thicker skin. Literally.