How to get started?

[MoniqueD]

I’ve finished my pelvic therapy last week, and my therapist told me I should be able to have pain free sex now. However, I’m 35 and I literally NEVER had successful penetrative sex and I feel a bit lost on where to start since she gave no instructions or advice. Have you guys got a plan of attack, so to speak? What should we try first? Go immediately for full penetration, things like that…? What can I expect, how can I involve my husband in a positive way?

[recessivegenequeen]

Hi MoniqueD – thanks so much for posting here! It can be really stressful and confusing when you’re first developing a plan of attack for penetration. I don’t recommend going straight to penetration because it can be sort of overwhelming both sensation-wise and emotionally and it can be discouraging if you feel like it’s not working right away.

Even if you’ve had a lot of success with pelvic floor therapy, I recommend getting into a dilation routine if that wasn’t already part of your treatment plan. If it was, great! Dilation really helps because it gets you both physically and psychologically used to being penetrated, which can make the transition to intercourse smoother. Generally, we recommend working your way up through the sets of dilators until you can comfortably insert a dilator that’s slightly larger than your partner’s penis. That way, you know you’re likely to accommodate the penis without any issues. We can provide a lot more dilation advice – just let us know if you’ve done any dilation before.

One way your partner can help while your’e dilating is to insert the dilators for you (once you’ve gotten comfortable with a given size of dilator). This helps you prepare for the fact that your partner will be more in control of the movement of his penis in certain positions.

Once you do try intercourse, it can be helpful to start having sex with you on top of your partner – it gives you a lot more control over angle, speed, intensity, etc. which is nice while you’re still learning your way around the process.

Finally, if you’ve had a vaginal pain issue for awhile, you might also have to do some work to get your partner ready to have intercourse as well. It might sound surprising, but a lot of male partners of women who have dealt with vaginismus start to have issues maintaining an erection when it’s time to try out intercourse. This happens for a variety of reasons, among them that the male partner might be feeling nervous about hurting you or he may have gotten used to a different sort of non-penetrative stimulation and have trouble making this transition. This is usually an issue that goes away with time and a little bit of work, and some men take Viagra or another erection-related pill while working on this with their partners.

I hope some of this helps! Let us know if you have other questions as you’re working on making the transition – you’ve already done a lot of hard work and have the tools to get the sex life you want!