Reply To: Feeling sore during dilating

[recessivegenequeen]

Allectus18, congrats on making so much progress with the dilators! Your pride in yourself is apparent and you totally deserve to enjoy this huge progress you’ve made happen for yourself.

Getting your sex drive back after years of dealing with the guilt, shame, and other negative emotions of vaginismus as well as unlearning the negative association between sex and pain that’s been reinforced over a long period of time is part of the process for being treated for vaginismus, even though it’s not the part we think about having to work on as much at first. What is often required is going back to the essentials with your partner and rediscovering the things that give you sexual pleasure even now. This can look like having sensual massages, kissing, touching, and practicing other acts of foreplay to build positive new sexual memories for yourself. It’s VERY natural to worry about having sex for the first time because of past experiences, but it can really help just to remind yourself logically that you’re able to insert dilators (that should be at least the size of your partner’s erect penis) – if you can do it with a hard plastic object, you can do it with a softer penis!

Let us know how it goes and if any other questions come up – you are doing so much to help yourself and should feel really proud!