My culture just came back positive for genital herpes. how long does it take to have an outbreak? could i have had herpes for a few months before having the outbreak? i was last tested in november.

Genital herpes: New herpes symptoms usually start 3-5 days after exposure, on rare occasions up to 2-3 weeks. It is very common for the first recognized herpes outbreak to actually be a recurrent outbreak of a longstanding infeciton that previously caused no symptoms. Make sure the virus is typed: it is very important to know whether HSV1 or 2. Genital HSV2 recurs often, HSV1 outbreaks usually uncommon.