Story from Greece

[leonii]

Hi, my name is Leonii and I live in Greece. I want to share you my personal story because it seems that the way vaginismus is treated is different in every country and I find that particularly interesting to read. We might actually be able to learn something from each other.

I have been together with my boyfriend since I was 18. At that time he lived in another city so we were not able to see each other frequently. It took quite some time before we started having sex, I think I was already 19. Or tried to have sex anyway because I had so much pain I literally fainted, which caused my husband to freak out cause he was so worried! We tried a few more times but each time he couldn’t get inside of me. So we looked for alternative ways to have sex because I was scared to talk about this with my doctor, and it wasn’t until I was 22 before I got my official diagnosis. One year later I started following therapy.

A while ago the laws changed here in Greece, and you now have to go to a sexologist with your partner after you’re ready with the pelvic floor specialist. If you don’t do that, the sessions at the pelvic floor therapist aren’t paid back by the government. The reason is they have discovered a lot if couples have sexual problems after the vaginismus has been cured and a sex therapist helps you to get over most of these issues. I’m really glad we went there because she helped us enormously and I can totally understand why this is an obligation right now.

At first this was very intimidating because you really have to talk about lots of things you rather want to keep secret, like my husband had to tell how many times he masturbated and other things, and we got exercises we had to do at home before even trying to attempt to have sex. My husband never had “real” sex so he was told that there was a high risk he would get erection and ejaculation problems because the feeling inside a vagina is completely different.

I felt like we had a safe place to return to after we had sex, and we could discuss all our problems with her and she ‘d find a solution together with us. I think it would be a good if other countries followed this idea!

[recessivegenequeen]

leonii, thanks so much for sharing your experience! This is super interesting and I can see how that is a really effective step in the vaginismus treatment process. A LOT of people post on these forums about how many male partners of former vaginismus sufferers deal with their OWN issues around arousal, keeping erections, and more once the vaginismus is addressed, so it’s nice that you had a structure to address that before it became a bigger issue in your relationship.

You might not know this, but do you know if that partner rule still applies if someone who is single but wants to cure their vaginismus is going through pelvic floor therapy? Or is that just something someone would be unlikely to do in Greece?

[leonii]

Not really sure what happens in that case, probably you need to see the sexologist on your own. But I was told not many single women suffering from vaginismus seek treatment.

[recessivegenequeen]

Realistically that’s probably true – I think that for the vast majority of women, the motivation is to be able to have sex with a partner, and if that isn’t a priority it feels like a problem that can be handled eventually, if at all.