Writing YA Character with Vaginismus

[LunaQu]

Hi everyone– I’m a writer and I’m about to start a new young adult book project with a protagonist with vaginismus. As some people have mentioned on the forum already, the recent show Sex Education featured a teen character with vaginismus, and watching this show was actually the first time I realized that vaginismus existed and that I had it. I would really like to create a piece of media that would be able to do something similar for young people so that they don’t have to wait as long as I did to understand their symptoms.
If anyone feels comfortable sharing, I would really love to hear people’s stories about having vaginismus as a teen. Did you know you had symptoms but couldn’t find a name for it? Did it affect you in any of your relationships at that age or your view of sex? Did adults in your life try to address it in ways that were either helpful or not helpful?
Thank you in advance for your stories, and I hope they can help me craft a realistic character that will speak to the experience of many teen girls.

[kiadenmark]

I suggest you take a moment and read some of the stuff that has been posted here on the forum. You’ll find lots of stories from (young) people dealing with vaginismus.

[recessivegenequeen]

Hi LunaQu – it’s great that you want to continue to educate on vaginismus! Definitely one of the great problems with it is that a lack of education means women are slow to figure out a diagnosis and spend many more years than they should suffering.

Kiadenmark makes a great point – there are tons of stories on here that you can start studying to learn how women have experienced vaginismus over the years (though I think you’ll see that many people suffer for years without knowing what’s going on or falsely believing their pain is normal/how all women feel). For seeing stories about teenage cases, I recommend specifically checking out the General, Success Stories, and Dilating categories.

If you have more specific questions about the experience of having vaginismus as a teen, feel free to ask!