[Florence]

Hey M,
Welcome to the forum and I hope you feel less alone in this knowing that there are others on here who are going through similar issues! And I hope you feel less sad today than you did when you wrote your post *hugs*

update:
I’ve had two appointments with my psychotherapist now which were consultations and she’s agreed to take me on and my first official appointment is on Thursday which I’m excited about and frustrated about. This seems like quite a protracted process so far as the NHS is pretty stretched so there was a 2 month gap between my first and second appointment, two weeks between my second and now my third – my appointments are due to be bi-weekly, but because she doesn’t work the school holidays I have to wait until September til they can properly commence, which seems like a very long way off when a large part of why I’m doing this is to try and save my relationship.

Things with my fella are still unravelling, but he is doing his best to help me with this and I think him knowing that I wasn’t just rejecting him because I wasn’t interested in him or something has helped and the last few months have improved a lot. Now the issue is ‘love but not in love’ which may/may not have been influenced by lack of sex for the last 18 months and may/may not improve now I’ve started treatment – I don’t know, and I’m old and wise enough to have given up trying to predict the future. Feeling precarious in a relationship absolutely sucks, but either way I need to get this fixed for myself and not for anyone else.

It is hard to face maybe loosing him and dealing with this issue when my mum is putting a lot of pressure on me to get married and have kids before I dry up (I’m 31). We don’t have a close relationship and even if I told her she wouldn’t understand, and if I told her I was seeing a psychotherapist she would be very negative about it and just tell me to stop being a hypochondriac because there’s nothing wrong with me. Because she’s helpful like that.

I’ve just got some dilators and am making the transition from tampons to menstrual cups for ethical reasons and that too is an ongoing battle as the cup is considerably larger than a tampon and hurts like hell when I pull it out, but I’m hoping that as I went through this process with tampons before which don’t hurt at all now, that I’ll be able to do the same with the cup and dilators and help get things down there accustomed to being poked and prodded and stretched.

[Florence]

I think with my past boyfriends I said pretty much the same thing as Vashalla. I’m quite a direct (and awkward) person so just tried to get it out of the way as soon as possible so we both knew where we stood rather than trying and failing and one or both getting frustrated/upset.

Explaining it as something that just happens and that you can’t really control makes it easier for the guy to get his head around too – so he doesn’t feel like it’s somehow his fault and doesn’t take your body refusing to let him in as you rejecting him. I also made sure they knew that just because we coudn’t have penetration it didn’t mean sex was totally off the cards and we could do other things instead.

[Florence]

Thanks Melissa I really appreciate it! I’m still waiting for my appointment with the psychotherapist to come through but I’m hopeful that things will get better 🙂

Hi Pixie! Welcome to the forum – I’m new too and also from the UK
I know the agoraphobia will make things more challenging for you, but if your hospital has a gum clinic I strongly recommend going there initially to ask for help – I went to my local hospital and the doctor and nurse were so lovely and so understanding. I’d never been to any kind of sexual health checkup so I was so embarrassed and shy and awkward but their kindness and compassion made it much less awful than I was expecting. They are the ones who referred me to a counsellor and followup psychotherapy. I don’t know if all areas in the UK are the same, but I’ve had depression in the past which I’ve received counselling for which I had to pay for so I was really surprised to find out that I wouldn’t have to pay for the psychotherapy – so it’s worth asking about that. The lady I’m going to see does sexual psychotherapy and that’s all she does, which could be why I can get it on the NHS? I don’t know if you were referred through some other way like GP if you would be sent to someone you would have to pay for.

From what I understand of kegels – next time you go to pee, try and stop peeing mid-flow and pay attention to how that feels and what muscles you’re using, and then later on try clenching and relaxing those same muscles as if you’re trying to hit pause on peeing, and that’s what you’re aiming for – I think they recommend it so you can be more aware of what your body is doing and so you can recognise when you’re all tensed up and understand better how to relax it. I am very new to this so I could be wrong in which case someone please say so! but that’s what I understand anyway.

Hope some of that helps
Good luck!
Florence

[Florence]

Hey, I know this was 6 months ago, but I wanted to say two things – firstly that I feel you! Today I just opened up and told two of my best friends and they were both so supportive. Between my last relationship and my current one I decided to play the dating game a bit for once and managed to side-step the first date sex successfully every time – I’m a pretty reserved person so I’m not into that anyway, but if after a few dates I allowed a guy into the bedroom I made it clear that that thing wasn’t going anywhere near me until I got to know him better and surprisingly they were all cool and really respectful of that and were willing to wait which reassured me that they were actually interested in getting to know me and not just getting their leg over and vanishing into the dust. So having this shouldn’t prevent you from being around guys – if they’re going to be dicks about it then you’re better off without them, but I think you would be surprised at how many men are actually pretty decent – as long as you’re clear with them about the speed you want to progress.

Vaginismus is a curse, yes, but in a way I find it is also a blessing. Because of it yes, I’ve had fewer boyfriends than most and I haven’t had short term relationships because I’m picky anyway but I’ve had to be picky with guys – I’ve had to develop a strong instinct about people and make sure I trust them before I let them close to me because I was so embarrassed about my condition and this- with one exception of my very first boyfriend- has led me to have three long term relationships in the last ten years with three exceptionally kind and caring men. I have never been cheated on, I’ve never been treated with anything but the utmost care and respect, and I have no regrets to look back on and cringe about either. This instinct has also on the wider scale acted like a BS filter so I don’t have any friends that aren’t utterly lovely, caring and supportive human beings. So while I hate this thing and can’t wait to get rid of it, I am also very grateful to have had it.

I guess it also depends on what you want from a relationship – I’m not someone who is interested in casual hookups anyway, and I look for old-fashioned gentlemen to stand by my side, and bizarrely Vaginismus helps me find them (even though it doesn’t really help me keep them). I guess what I’m saying is try to look beyond this as a curse and use it to your advantage to hone your intuition about people and let it filter out the ones who won’t treat you with compassion dignity and respect. Just ‘more’ won’t necessarily enhance your life, but ‘better’ will 🙂

[Florence]

Thank you for starting this thread! If anyone has read my intro on the newbie thread my failing relationship is kind of foremost in my mind at the moment and it has been fear on so many levels that has driven me to find answers. I’m not single at the moment but it looks like I will be in the not too distant future and it terrifies me that I may have to open up to someone yet again and have to explain to someone else yet again what my problem is.

I guess I was just wondering if I am alone in feeling like sex is some kind of duty I should be able to perform in order to keep a relationship from failing? I know I am right at the very very beginning of my journey so I have a lot to learn- Nicole and Aimee, you said that treating my Vaginismus should be about me and for me and it will feel empowering, but at the same time because I have only ever associated sex with pain and a whole bunch of negative emotions, the sexual aspect of a relationship not something I have ever looked forward to and have actively shied away from – I may well have a sex drive but it is buried very deep under lots of self-preservation, so I do really feel like I’m doing this in order to not mess up yet another relationship rather than to enable me to enjoy myself – if that makes sense – functionality is more important to me than pleasure at the moment. If I enjoy myself I’d see that as a bonus. I know it’s probably not the right attitude to have, and I hope that with time and treatment and therapy this will change, but I just want to know am I totally alone in thinking like this?

[Florence]

@heather34 I hope this doesn’t sound like a really invasive question but how do you keep the dilator in you? I’ve just bought a set today on amazon as I’ve been recently diagnosed and really want to work on overcoming this and equally really feel I should get a smear test done as I’m 31 now and never had one before because I was too scared (and judging by what Newsoul and Daisy went through that fear is justified!!) Dilating beforehand sounds like a really good idea, but I know from having a bullet that if it’s just left to sit there, my body will just push it out.
Thanks in advance!

[Florence]

I ask myself the same question too – I also read books like the ones you described when I was a kid and while I was a bit like ‘oh wow… that’s grim’ and quietly put it back on the shelf in disgust, it never made me think that sex should be traumatic and I never expected to be met with intense pain, and shame, guilt, anger and disappointment every time I tried for well over a decade. I went to an all-girls school and while most of my friends were losing their virginity at 14 I was too scared to let any boy near me til I was 19 so I got labelled things like prude, freak and lesbian which could not be further from the truth, but I think it added to the sense of isolation and shame and prevented me from seeking help sooner, and I feel awful for any young girls who are feeling the same way now.

Sometimes I wonder what I’ve done to deserve this because I know I’m a good person, but I have to remind myself that this is just one of those things and I just have to accept it and now I know what’s actually wrong with me I can focus on doing something about it and I think the more we talk about it the more women can get help and fewer women feel so isolated and helpless:)

[Florence]

Hi Ladies (and gents?)!

I have had this problem my whole life and it has messed up every relationship I’ve been in.

I have been lucky that the men I have had in my life have been for the most part wonderful and caring people, but I would be naïve to think the fact I can’t give them that one simple thing had nothing to do with my relationships falling apart. My terror of anything going near me has also led to me avoiding getting smear tests done which I know is important and reading some other posters on here it’s awful that they feel the same way but I’m honestly pretty glad that I am not the only one.

I actually looked at some videos on the net to see if there was something I was doing wrong physically and when you see these guys who are thicker than my wrists basically falling into girls I just couldn’t understand how it was even possible- and women in sex scenes on tv looking like they’re enjoying themselves – The thought of enjoying sex is inconceivable to me – all attempts have just left me curled up in a ball feeling like an utter failure. I’ve just turned 31 and I’m an only child and my mum (who doesn’t have a clue about vaginismus, or that I have it and if she knew she would totally dismiss it as silliness) keeps coming out with comments like ‘when are you going to settle down and have a family?’ and ‘so when am I getting grandchildren?’, ‘just so you know, menopause starts early in my family so you better get a move on’ and ‘you’re not getting any younger you know, your eggs are drying up. Maybe you should freeze some’. Thanks mum. Really helpful. The thought of pushing an entire other person out of me is up there with using an aeroplane as a dildo.

My current relationship with the kindest, most generous person in the world is on the very brink of collapse, and again although he wouldn’t dream of saying as much I’m sure that a huge part of it is because we lack intimacy and it has put this distance between us and I have built up so much negativity in myself around sex that I’m honestly scared to even try it. Without his kindness and support, and the fear of losing him outweighing my fear of my body I would never have gone to the clinic to talk to someone to get to the bottom of why this is happening. I don’t know if it is too late for my relationship but I have to try. If not for this one than to not have to go through this yet again for the next one.

I could have cried when the doctor told me I was physically ‘normal’ – partly from embarrassment at having to show myself to a complete stranger for the first time, partly from relief that I wasn’t deformed and partly from frustration that if I was physically fine why couldn’t I perform the simplest function that any animal can do? How am I failing so dismally at being female on such a basic level? I was really lucky that within half an hour she had made some calls and I was sitting in an office with a counsellor and I just got my letter through the post on Friday to see a sex psychotherapist.

I’m both excited and terrified to start this journey!

I really want to save my relationship and am putting myself out here because I know how important a healthy sex life is in a relationship but I honestly don’t even know what that means because I have never experienced it. I also know my insecurity and body image has got so low over the last year because I can’t perform that my negativity has really made things so much worse than they need to be, so I was googling to find out what the best positions are for people with vaginismus and I stumbled on this place. I actually burst into tears when I found this forum – I’m not an emotional person generally but finding other people – REAL people who are going through the same thing I am that I could actually talk to about this stuff has made me feel overwhelmed with so many different emotions – empathy, relief that I’m not abnormal, sadness that anyone else has had to experience the same thing, and above all, hope that it can get better

Thank you – you guys really don’t know how much it means to me to have found you after almost of 15 years of thinking I was some kind of freak and totally alone.

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