My Vagina Doesn't Work
I was realistic. I was prepared for it not to be all rose petals and candles the first time.
And yet, all I can remember from that experience was pain, pain and a lot of shame. As he tried to enter me, I was overwhelmed with the worst pain I had ever felt. I can only describe the sensation as though broken glass was tearing me up from the inside. I was 16 when I first tried to have sex, and at nearly 21 years of age, I have never been successful. The pain is too intolerable.
I have been assessed by a sexual health doctor and diagnosed with vestibulodynia and vaginismus. Vestibulodynia is when the nerves that surround the vaginal opening react with pain when touched and vaginismus is when the vagina tightens due to an involuntary contraction of the pelvic floor muscles. The muscles act as a wall that stops anything from entering the vaginal opening. The two are quite a combo and even affect my urinary and bowel movements.
Treatment is often long, ranging from months to years and involves a combination of exercises. For me, my physiotherapist recommends that I do up to ten minutes of vaginal dilator training (see figure 1) a day. At the start of treatment, you start with the smallest dilator until insertion is no longer painful, and then you work your way up the sizes.
Another recommended treatment is counselling. I see a sexual trauma counsellor help me deal with non-consensual events that happened in my first relationship. They also help me navigate life with this painful condition and depression and anxiety.
The other day on Instagram I saw a quote that really resonated with how I feel about the trauma and pain.
“You can be grateful for something in your life and still wished that it never happened.”
I have been on this journey for nearly five years now, and although it has been debilitating, I have come out as a stronger person for it. I have had to redefine what being a woman, and a sexual being means for me. For me, it means that my femininity and sex life cannot be compared with any other woman’s.
This is not only beneficial for women who suffer from vaginismus, but all women who look to media and porn to assess what their sex lives “should” look like. If sex is pleasurable, it doesn’t matter what it looks like.
There is no certainty around how long I will have both vaginismus and vestibulodynia. Despite this, I remain hopeful. Why? Because I have learnt that I don’t need sex to make me a whole person, and just because I can’t have sex doesn’t make me less of a person.