The biggest hurdle with treating painful intercourse is that patients don’t realize they can be helped!
When you are having pain with intercourse it’s usually due to one of these factors – your muscles might be tight, either at the entrance to the vagina or around it, the skin in the vagina might be irritated, inflamed or dry, or the nerve endings might be overactive in some areas of the vulva or vagina. Most often it is a combination of things and one problem can cause a secondary problem. In almost every case the problems can be successfully treated and the pain can be resolved.
Unfortunately, many women think that they are the only one with the problem, the problem must be in their head, or there is no way the problem can be solved. So they just don’t go for help. Or they go for help and the first person they see either doesn’t understand the problem or trivializes it and then they are more convinced than ever that the problem doesn’t have a solution. Or, in the cases that are most infuriating to me, a doctor doesn’t “see” any problem and tells you that there “is not a problem.” Really???? You know if there is a problem and I promise you, if you think something isn’t right, it probably isn’t.
So here are some of the treatments that are used to help women when intercourse is painful and you can rest assured that in the right hands, they almost always work:
- Manually stretching the vaginal muscles with dilators or physical therapy.
- Using topical creams and ointments on specific parts of the vulva or vagina.
- Using lubricants or moisturizers in the vagina.
- Learning relaxations techniques and exercises.
- Botulinum Toxin injections on the muscles that just don’t want to cooperate.
Without question, my most important piece of advice to you would be to not give up. Trust that there is someone out there who can help you and find that person! You don’t have to live with painful intercourse and you certainly don’t have to be celibate to avoid the pain.