Re: Vaginismus in Marriage

[Heather34]

Hi Alyx. I’ve thought a lot about your question and was hoping to help you with a couple of suggestions:

1. It seems like talking with your husband sometimes causes arguing and fighting. Try writing out everything that you’d like to say to him (i.e. all of your feelings, etc.) and share this with him. I would encourage him to do the same. Then, put some quiet time aside; agree in advance to not fight about the letters; and spend some time really reading the content together.

2. Try practicing with the dilators together with your husband. I wrote in a prior post that I felt so strange about the suggestion of taking the dilators out and putting them back in with my hubby present in the recovery room right after the procedure. After I talked to Andrea, though, and realized the importance of overcoming vaginismus together, I became a lot more comfortable with doing this in front of him and also let him participate as well. I practiced with the dilators first; I then had him place his hand over mine while practicing; and then I let him remove and re-insert the dilators himself. This definitely enhanced our trust and closeness and he said that it helped him so much as he was able to see for the first time that it wasn’t causing me any pain whatsoever. When we transitioned to intercourse, I trusted him entirely with the dilators because of this time we spent practicing together and he gently removed the largest dilator and inserted himself. It was a complete success and, again, worked so well because of the trust factor for me and for him, the fact that he had already seen and, thus, knew that I wasn’t experiencing pain. I would highly recommend practicing with the dilators together to help with the transition. It may sound a little strange or foreign at first, but we found it a very important step in overcoming vaginismus.

I hope this helps Alyx. Ladies, do you have any further suggestions here as well?????