Pending clinical review. This page describes the commonly reported symptom picture and has not yet been reviewed by a named clinician. It is orientation, not diagnosis, and no page can tell you whether you have herpes. If you have symptoms now, be seen while they are present — a sexual health clinic is free, and the swab works best early.
The first one is usually the worst one.
If you are in the middle of a bad first episode, it is easy to assume this is the new normal. For most people it is not — later episodes are considerably smaller events.
A first episode commonly involves several of these, though few people get all of them:
- Warning sensations first. Tingling, itching, burning or aching in one area, often a day or two before anything appears.
- Blisters, then shallow sores. Small blisters that break into tender open sores, then crust and heal. They can appear on the shaft or head of the penis, the foreskin, the scrotum, the buttocks, thighs, or around the anus.
- Pain passing urine. Particularly if sores are near the urethra.
- Discharge from the urethra. Less common, and frequently the reason it gets treated as a different infection first.
- Feeling generally unwell. Fever, aching, headache and swollen glands in the groin — a real flu-like illness while the immune system meets something new.
A first episode can take two to three weeks to settle. That is longer than most people expect and is not a sign anything has gone wrong.
Recurrences are usually small and local.
Later episodes tend to be milder and shorter — often a small patch in one place, healing in days rather than weeks, with no flu-like element. Many people come to recognise their own prodrome and know an episode is starting before it is visible.
Frequency varies a great deal between people, and generally settles down over the years. There is no standard pattern you are supposed to match.
Why it gets written off.
Mild recurrences in particular are easy to attribute to something else and forget about.
Ingrown hairs
The single most common misreading. An ingrown hair is usually one bump with a hair or dark dot at the centre; herpes tends to cluster and to blister. Full comparison here.
Chafing or friction
Sore patches from cycling, running, tight clothing or sex are extremely common, and a mild recurrence in the same spot each time can be filed under this for years.
Balanitis or thrush
Irritation and soreness of the head of the penis has several causes. Blistering that breaks into shallow sores is the feature that separates this out.
Many people have no symptoms at all.
A large proportion of people carrying herpes simplex never notice anything, or have symptoms mild enough to be dismissed. Two things follow from that, and both are worth holding on to.
A diagnosis does not tell you when you acquired it. The virus can lie dormant for years, so a first noticed outbreak is not a first infection, and it cannot identify who you got it from. A great deal of unnecessary blame rests on assuming otherwise.
And having never had symptoms is not the same as not carrying it — which is precisely why it is so common and why so few people know.
Seek help urgently if you cannot pass urine, if the pain is severe, or if you feel seriously unwell. Contact a sexual health clinic, your GP, or NHS 111.
This page is educational and is not medical advice. Interval’s care service is not yet open, and we do not diagnose. This page is written by non-clinicians from the sources listed at the foot of the page, and has not been independently reviewed by a clinician.
If it turns out to be this, the first weeks are the hardest part.
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- NHS. Genital herpes. www.nhs.uk
- Patel R et al. British Association of Sexual Health and HIV UK national guideline for the management of anogenital herpes, 2024. Int J STD AIDS. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Last checked 10 August 2026. Read our editorial policy for how we source and review these pages.