Blood test says HSV-1 positive but I have never had a sore

HSV-1 antibodies are extremely common in the general population and most people who have them picked it up in childhood as an oral infection, often without ever getting a visible sore. A positive antibody test tells you your body has met the virus at some point. It doesn’t tell you where, and it doesn’t tell you when.

This is why a lot of clinics don’t include herpes in a standard screen unless you have symptoms. The result frequently raises more questions than it answers, which is exactly where you are now.

One specific thing worth asking whoever ordered it: how close was the result to the cutoff. Some labs report a value alongside the positive, and a result sitting just over the line is the situation where a confirmatory test is sometimes recommended before anyone treats it as settled.

Separately, for telling a partner, be clear about what you actually have: antibodies, no known site, no history of symptoms. That is a genuinely different conversation from a swab confirmed genital diagnosis, and running them together makes you carry something heavier than your result.