dealing with Astericks

Hi!
I have a question. Everytime someone (in comments) or myself (in posting) writes something between two astericks like this: *example* , the text in the middle becomes BOLD and we lose the astericks. Is there a way to correct this so that whenever someone types: * this* it shows up as, *this*……I hope this wasnt too confusing, but basically, I just want the astericks to show up just as users type them.
Thank you for any help.