Reply To: Waiting long before seeking help

[recessivegenequeen]

Hi Bettydee – coming here to second Heather’s point that MANY people grow up thinking sex is a normal and inexplicable part of sex. It’s a desperately sad failing of our culture’s sex education and general unwillingness to discuss women’s health concerns in general. I first started sensing that something was wrong with my vagina when I started dating at 15 and didn’t figure out I had vaginismus until I was 21 – and it wasn’t a doctor who helped me discover this, I had to figure it out myself after a bad visit to a campus health center. It was another 3.5 years or so until I actually got treatment right after I turned 25, so I lived with the pain and shame for almost 10 years. This kind of story is SUPER normal in the vaginismus community and is probably the majority of cases. It’s rare for a woman to get answers or treatment quickly after experiencing the issue, many of us push through the pain. I desperately hope education around this gets better and future women can get treatment more easily and suffer less.