My story

[anna2021]

After reading all the posts here on the forum, I decided to put my own story here as well.

My name is Anna, I’m 25 and I live in the Eastern part of Germany.

Both me and my husband are immigrants and we come from a religious and conservative family, where sex is something that is never spoken about. Masturbation is forbidden for religious reasons, and we both were virgins until we got married. Most people in our community interpret those rules very strict, but that doesn’t mean nothing is allowed. In my case, me and my husband did kiss, we did see each other naked, we touched each other, etc… the only thing we never had was sex (and an orgasm).

In many of the stories I’ve read here, men are left out, as if they didn’t exist or had to accept the fact women have vaginismus without complaining. While I know it’s OUR problem, vaginismus has a giant impact on men as well, and I’m going to explicitly tell you what happened to my husband when we discovered I had vaginismus, since I think that being honest about this can help some of you to understand their partner better. So a warning ahead: this post is going to feature some intimate details.

Me and my husband are always in for a good party, so our wedding night went on until 4AM in the morning. We had a plane to catch to Turkey (our honeymoon!)at 9AM, so we basically didn’t sleep and nothing special happened in bed. We agreed before we would have sex on the first night in our all inclusive hotel, with (picture this!) the sound of the sea coming through an open window, while the white curtains were dancing in the wind and violins were playing in the background. Yeah, I know, I’ve been reading too many books. 🙂 Anyway, it was supposed to be a very special event… the first time sex… for both of us. Knowing I never had an orgasm before, and my husband only had orgasms in his sleep, yeah, I don’t think it will be hard to imagine we were both looking forward to this for a long time.

A cocktail, a swimming pool, a beach, hot weather… we were MORE than prepared that day and both super curious how it would feel to finally complete the puzzle with that final missing piece. Unfortunately, no matter what we tried that evening, he couldn’t enter me. I thought my husband was perhaps a bit too enthusiastic, and I needed more foreplay, so we finally gave up, went to sleep and I told him we’d give it another try next evening.

The second evening we had a much longer foreplay, to the point my husband told me he was going to explode if we went any further. 🙂 Unfortunately, the issue was still there. This time he could get the tip of his penis in, but when he did that I was in so much pain he had to pull back. It felt as if everything was super tight down there, which already started worrying me. I think it was way past midnight before we both fell asleep, frustrated and full with sexual energy that couldn’t be released.

The third day my husband suggested we’d go to the pharmacy to get some lubricant, hoping that would help getting his penis inside more easily. Something that was supposed to be romantic, was already becoming too ‘technical’ for my taste and the relaxing holiday quickly turned into a stressful time for both of us. My husband became even more sexually frustrated, started touching me on intimate places throughout the day, while I was feeling more pressure to have sex with him, even if I really couldn’t. That evening, we repeated what we did the day before. Long foreplay, now with lots of lube and… once more, he couldn’t enter me. The next morning, he woke up and noticed he had a nocturnal emission. His sexual frustration was gone, and replaced by embarrassment (and guilt from my side). We tried to make the best of the few days we had left, but the feeling between us wasn’t the same anymore.

Once we got back home, I immediately scheduled an appointment with my doctor. I absolutely wanted to know what was wrong with me, cause it was having a giant impact on our relationship. I was REALLY lucky my doc had a vaginismus patient in the past, and she immediately knew what was going on. About a month later I already had my first consult with a pelvic floor specialist.

In the mean time, I told my husband I couldn’t have sex because of my condition. Our conclusion was we’d have to find other ways to be intimate in order for our marriage to survive. But how? I think our lack of sexual experience was really problematic at this point, and causing more frustration than needed. No matter what we tried, from nude massages to touching each others genitals, playing with my breasts, vulva, etc… this never gave us an orgasm and instead caused more and more sexual frustration. His body decided that enough was enough, and gave him weekly wet dreams, for which I got the blame.

As soon as I started seeing my pelvic floor specialist, me and my husband also scheduled regular appointments with a sexologist. She helped us finding better – less frustrating – ways to have “some kind of” sex, which enabled my husband to come between my thighs. Not the same thing as real sex, but at least he had relief. At the same time, my husband learned where and how to touch me and six months later, I had my very first orgasm.

The reason I’m writing this all down with so many details is because what our sexologist told us really CHANGED our marriage (for the better). I’m currently still dilating and I won’t be able to have real sex anytime soon, but we do have an alternative in the mean time. And that’s important! We’ve also changed the way we communicate on sex the past months, and when one of us is in the mood and the other one isn’t, we have no issues enabling our partner to finish. I think this is super important in religions or communities where masturbation is not allowed. I have the impression most American women think males can take matters into their own hands when they have vaginismus, but that it surely not always the case.

I know of one other member of my community and she has vaginismus too but she’s totally ignoring her husband. He recently got a very painful prostate infection because he didn’t ejaculate for many, many months, and apparently that’s not healthy.

[blueclouds]

@anna2021 Thank you for sharing your story.

I think we all underestimate the impact vaginismus can have on our partner.

About the prostate infections, I remember having seen a study which revealed there is a link between prostatitis and vaginismus. If my memory serves me right, the fact men don’t ejaculate for a prolonged period of time can actually cause this. We often think that all males masturbate, but that is far from true. Millions and millions of men don’t masturbate for religious reasons, and those men suffer extra hard when their partner is diagnosed with vaginismus.

[recessivegenequeen]

Thanks so much for sharing your story, Anna! I think this will be super useful for other women in similar situations to read. It’s great to hear that you and your husband both put so much work into figuring out other ways to be intimate while you are still figuring out your own vaginismus treatment. I think a key lesson here is that you’re not trying to rush your dilation by trying to get to intercourse before you’re ready but are still finding ways to connect with your husband. We have very little control sometimes over how long our vaginismus treatment takes, so it’s great that you’re not putting additional pressure on yourself!