It's not just a kissing disease. The direct, evident exchange of bodily fluids is not a prerequisite. You can get it from a hand shake. Sexual transmission is o

It's not just a kissing disease. The direct, evident exchange of bodily fluids is not a prerequisite. You can get it from a hand shake. Sexual transmission is only incidental, or rather more or less nomenclature, indicating the rough interpersonal proximity required for transmission, and not the specific acts that precipitate transmission. People who spread it won't readily display symptoms while contagious. People have it and don't realize it. Doctors don't even test you for it, unless you specifically ask, since it's not life threatening, and most people who would test positive may have had it since infancy. Simplex I is the more common infection, that even your grandma probably has by now. Simplex II is the skeevy version that your cousin picked up in middle school. Technically speaking, it has to do with the tendency for each species to proliferate in different mucous membranes. The differentiation probably has something to do with the way the human body operates the immune system at different levels in different parts of the body, and over millions of years, each species has adapted to colonize one orifice more readily than another. Furthermore, HSV I can show up on the mouth or anywhere else. HSV II can ALSO show up on the mouth or anywhere else. You can have both on the mouth simultaneously or both on your junk simultaneously, or one on your junk and the other on your mouth. Each species of virus has a tendency to reside in one area and transmits from that area more readily than the opposing area, but it's really just a liklihood, not hard rules that one only happens here and the other there. That tendency to colonize the mouth is what makes HSV I so common and transmissible because our mouths are exposed to more environments and come into contact with various situations and aren't covered behind clothing nearly as often as elsewhere.