I'm (30/m) feeling unsure about relationship with my gf (28/f) of 5 years. She won't move in, never talks about the future, and she gave me HPV.

What this study states is that if it were latent infections, then there would not be a correlation between infections and new partners later on in life, which is exactly what they found. Of course, you can't rule out the possibility that there are still some latent infections just by proving there is direct association between new partners and new infections since it could just be that few of the individuals in the study have the "type" that is latent or some other yet unknown fact. But I wanted to make it clear to the people reading our conversation that the point of the paper you cited was to say they have evidence to support reinfection rather than latent infection.

I would hardly call 6000+ studies "hardly any." Those studies have specifically outlined that over 90% of visible genital warts are likely to be one of two strains that don't have any known association with cancer. In fact, that would suggest that we CAN'T assume that it behaves the same as high risk types. They don't enter into the host's genome like high-risk types, hence the lack of cancerous association. So I'm not sure why you think genital warts should be assumed to behave like high risk types.

Now, I'm not saying that OP will definitely clear after 2 years. I'm not saying there's no way that OP can ever cause anyone to get infected. And I'm not saying that he should ignore his breakouts either. But he absolutely has the right to stay optimistic and not doom himself to a life of infection like he's some kind of leper when it's already statistically likely that his next sexual partner will have or have had one or more infections, when he is receiving treatment, etc.

Interestingly, I am reminded of patients with HIV. Many HIV+ patients still have unprotected sex, children, etc. without ever passing on the infection because their viral load is so low with treatment. The argument is that there can still be infections that are latent, but the testing tech we have now may not detect extremely low loads. But if that's the case, wouldn't the passing of the infection be an irrelevant point anyway? Of course, we don't like to think of it that way, because they're infected regardless. But the reality of HIV patients is that viral load number dictates if they go back to living their life normally. Just an interesting thought.

But again, I want to reiterate that I don't think your approach is WRONG. I just wouldn't encourage a patient to think they're infected for life like some diseased human with the most commonly transmitted STI. That could have serious emotional repercussions for no reason, when there's a very significant chance he will clear it (or even just get the viral load to an undetectable value in the purely hypothetical case of latent infection) based on all available information.

/r/relationship_advice Thread