Almost nothing your doctor told you is accurate. First, let's address the acyclovir. Acyclovir is a very safe, herpes specific antiviral med and the generic version is now very inexpensive. So far so good... However, it has a fairly short serum half-life, meaning that the active ingredient is cleared from your system in a few hours. A single dose per day, even for suppression, is not going to work well. The recommended suppressive dose is 400 mg twice a day.

Now, about condom use. He's wrong there, too. First, condoms are not 100% effective. Herpes is transmitted via skin to skin contact primarily. It's not a bodily fluid borne pathogen like HIV. A little thought about the mechanics of sexual intercourse reveals that an active symptomatic area on the woman may well come into contact with areas of skin on the male that are not covered by the condom. Male infections are not uncommonly seen on the penis just below where the condom's protection ends. That said it does provide at least a 50% reduction in transmission risk. One important factor is that the most vulnerable skin is the mucous membrane such as the head of the penis, which the condom does cover. Regular skin is more of a barrier to infection.

If you are having sex with an already infected partner, about the only precaution you want to take is to avoid contact with symptomatic areas when they are actually symptomatic. In other words, don't rub an outbreak against your partner's skin. Duh!! Like who's going to do that anyway? It's not very comfortable.

To summarize: Sex with an uninfected partner involves some risk of transmission, but it's probably lower than you thought. A recent study involving couples where one partner was infected and the other was not, produced a risk PER YEAR of 4% from an infected female to an uninfected male if all they did was to avoid sex during active symptoms. Adding suppressive antivirals reduced that by half, as did condom use.

Let me know if I can help further.