Misguided

[Callyyy]

I’m 22 now, and I had my first sexual experience a few months ago.

Words cannot describe how much pain I had when my boyfriend was trying to enter me. It felt as if my entire vagina was on fire! He did manage to penetrate me but we had to stop because the pain was too intense for me. There was blood on the sheets and the day after I could still feel how irritated my entire vagina was (and no, he has an average penis size, so that wasn’t the reason for the pain).

A few days later we tried again, and while the pain was manageable now, it still didn’t feel okay.
I’ve got a pretty good relationship with my mum and I talked to her about what happened. She immediately recognized the signals, said I had vaginismus and told me to seek help.

I made an appointment with a gyn a friend recommended, but continued to have PIV sex with my boyfriend in the mean time (partially because I didn’t want to let him down). By the time I had to go to the gyn, I magically was able to have pain free sex. Just to be sure she did an internal exam and it turned out vaginismus was out of the question. My mom was totally wrong.

I wanted to post this here because women seem to forget that there MIGHT (MIGHT – it’s not the case for everyone) be a transition phase between “not having sex at all” and “having pain free sex”. Some girls have a tighter hymen, or a tighter vagina, and in order to comfortably fit a penis, the vagina needs to stretch a bit and become flexible. This can hurt (even a lot!) but it’s not related to vaginismus. Somehow this message got lost during sex ed, at least I never heard about it.

[recessivegenequeen]

Callyyy – thanks for posting your story! This actually lines up really well with what marianne, who wrote a book about sex that’s used for educational purposes in Europe, posted very recently elsewhere on the forum:
http://mazewomenshealth.com/forums/topic/some-info/#post-47943

For a long time vaginismus was underrepresented as a diagnosis and many women went years thinking their pain was “normal” or being misled by doctors and gynecologists, told to “just relax,” etc. In the past year or so, for the first time on the forums I’ve started seeing stories more like yours where the vaginismus diagnosis was misplaced on someone who actually had more normal sexual functioning or pain that wore off in time. I’m not a scientist but I have a suspicion this is the pendulum swinging far in the other direction of people wanting to be extra sure that potential vaginismus cases are addressed. Personally I think this is still a preferable situation because you got to the gynecologist early and ended up not having an issue, but if it HAD been vaginismus, you would have been well positioned to get help or learn about your treatment options without the years of suffering and uncertainty that a lot of women who have endured vaginismus lost time to.

I hope that the eventual outcome will be a pattern of education like marianne describes in the post above – that women are educated to understand that pain during sex the first few times is normal but it’s important to seek more information if that pain isn’t lessening over time. It’s hard for such nuanced education to get distributed, but hopefully time will bring about more specific and practical information.

It’s interesting to hear what you’ve experienced, Callyyy, and I’m glad you’re now able to have pain-free sex!