Cheating because of Vaginismus???

[Tigerman]

Hello everyone
Just throwing it out there

If the woman has Vaginismus, and refuses to get treated

Does that justify the man cheating on her?

[Sks823]

In my opinion, the cheating is not justified.

There are a lot of reasons someone with vaginismus may refuse to get treated – it is very scary (especially if she has gone through a lot of pain in past attempts at sex or with pap smears, tampons, etc.) and she may be convinced that she is a different case where treatment won’t work on her. Is there a way for you to tell her about the success rate of treatment with dilators (and/or botox)? https://www.vaginismus.com/faq/treatment-questions/vaginismus-treatment-success-rates/

I know bringing up vaginismus can be a sensitive topic for her, but that may be because she’s misinformed & may think that it’s something she will not be able to resolve.

Try and work with her to show her she will be able to get over her vaginismus – show her the success stories on these forums, encourage her that the success rate of vaginismus treatment is so high, let her know it’s not some untreatable issue (in your other post she described it as a “disease” which it definitely isn’t).

Treatment may take a bit of work, but the outcome is so worth it!

[recessivegenequeen]

Tigerman, I understand your position, and your frustration – I’ve seen your other post about your wife’s situation and I sympathize strongly with the fact that you feel helpless and like you have no way to get the results you want. That’s an extremely difficult position to be in.

BUT, to momentarily put aside the moral question of whether cheating is wrong, I don’t think it would even really help your situation. Say you did have an affair with someone else – do you think this would have no negative effect on your married life? It seems like to get your sexual needs met you’d have to keep regularly cheating on your wife for the rest of your life – could you realistically keep this a secret that long? I have to imagine your marriage would take a huge hit if your wife found out about your adultery, and speaking as a former vaginismus sufferer, this would be an even more devastating blow to her already low self-esteem.

Basically, I don’t think you’d be able to get your needs met without ruining your marriage in some way. And if that’s the case, then you’d probably be better served by being honest because at least then you have the option of reaching a solution together with your wife instead of betraying her and creating an irreparable rift in your marriage. I think there’s a couple ways of doing this. One way would be to go to your wife and ask if she would be open to the idea of you having another sexual partner to satisfy your needs. This gives you the opportunity to discuss your needs and reach some kind of compromise.

Another thing you could do would be to go to your wife and tell her that sex is important enough to you that your marriage will fail without it and tell her she needs to seek treatment in some reasonable span of time or you can’t stay together. I am usually hesitant to recommend such an option because it often comes across as harsh, but the truth is that it was something my boyfriend did and it’s what caused me to finally get treatment – I realized I would lose him if I didn’t finally fix myself, so I did. This should not be something that you attempt as a false threat though – it could backfire and damage the trust in your marriage. But if you’re thinking about cheating on your wife, that tells me you’re probably already in the stages of believing the marriage is failing.

I think Sks823 had some really good suggestions about further informing your partner about the possibility of treatment, because it’s very possible that she may not realize how fixable this problem is. But if you feel you’ve tried your hardest to educate her and she still isn’t listening to you, I would recommend what I said above and either discuss the possibility of having another sexual partner or discussing whether your marriage can work at all if it’s sexless. I know that cheating seems like the short-term solution that might spare your wife’s feelings, but it’s going to hurt her a lot more in the long run if she finds out and your marriage falls apart.

[Kelly88]

Hello
I am unable to first penetration… I am 6 month married..what i do?

[Sks823]

Kelly88,

Seeing a pelvic floor therapist in your area and mentioning your issues with sex and asking if they can help you with dilator physical therapy would be a good start!

Or buying dilators and trying them on your own (depending on your comfort level – may be an option if you can use tampons already/are semi-comfortable with insertion).

Good luck!