Reply To: Was this inappropriate or did she actually help me?

[recessivegenequeen]

It’s a complicated question because you can’t know what the alternative would have been – whether you might have suffered from vaginismus or whether nothing would have happened at all, making this unnecessary trauma in the past. We simply cannot ever know what the other path would have been. Likely your mother and this gynecologist had just hoped to keep you from experiencing pain in the future, but of course a lot of people do well-intentioned things that have unexpected consequences.

If this is something that feels like it actively occupies your thoughts in your current life or just something you don’t feel you’ve moved past, you might consider seeing a therapist to work through the emotions around this experience there. Sometimes it takes us longer than we would expect to reckon with experiences we didn’t understand at the time, and there’s nothing wrong with seeking that clarity now. At any rate, I’m glad you have an issue-free sex life now – that is great!