Women talk about painful sex
Tova: A Cycle of Pain
"Tova" is a 24-year-old grad student who married "Alan" in September 2007. She and Alan are Orthodox Jews who had dated for a year and then were engaged for a year, but, following religious tradition, abstained from all physical contact before their wedding. The classes each took about Jewish marriage before the wedding didn't include information about sexual intimacy.
"At a certain time you really have to bury the sexual instinct very deeply when you love someone but can't hold hands," Tova said of their time dating. "You really repress yourself even more than you have been."
A healthy sex life has not come easily to the young married couple. Intercourse has been difficult.
"I kept experiencing discomfort, for several months. I had no idea what normal was," Tova says. "I didn't put it together with the fact that I was on birth control pills and they can cause vaginal dryness. I would be emotionally very excited but my body wouldn't respond the way I thought it would. That was really hard. It took me a long time to be ready for relations and even with tons of lubricant it would still often hurt."
That began what Tova describes as "a pain cycle."
"I got into this loop of anticipating the pain and tightening up. That was really hard. I knew it would hurt and it was hard to tell my body to relax when I knew that."
Since Tova and her husband abstain from physical contact when she has her period and for the week afterward, "two weeks out of the month we weren't able to be together anyway. It took us awhile to figure out that there was a problem."
Three months into the marriage, Tova was having pain in what she thought was her cervix. A gynecologist told her that since a pelvic exam could be conducted, it meant she didn't have vaginismus.
"I've now learned that that's not true," Tova says. "But I thought I just needed to make a more concerted effort to relax and use more lubricant. I kept trying different things, other positions that might be more comfortable" for intercourse.
Even months later the problem was getting worse, not better.
Tova had been consulting with a former teacher, a woman with expertise on the issues of sex in marriage, who advised her to write up what she was feeling. A lifetime of negative feelings around body image and sexuality came pouring out onto 20 pages, Tova says.
Then her teacher suggested that she call The Center. Tova made an appointment in January, but canceled it. "It's not easy to pick up the phone and make that call," Tova says. "I had to do it when I had time to do it and cry afterward."
She called back and in June, had her first meeting with the MCFS clinicians, who diagnosed vaginismus.
"I had six appointments over six or seven weeks. I worked with dilators until I got up to the widest one they had. In the meantime the Clinical Director suggested I read a book called The Guide to Getting it On. I bought the book and my husband and I took turns reading parts of it.
"It was such a relief because I wanted lots of information. The book is very funny, down to earth, with drawings that actually tell you what to do. That was really helpful for us. We also got suggestions from the staff for other things we could do.
The result of all this is we've learned a tremendous amount about sex and our bodies. I'm still going through treatments, using the dilator for 10 minutes every single night so my muscles don't get tight again. When I use it consistently, then everything is fine.
My understanding of sex was very narrow before I went to the Center. I learned about different ways of being intimate," Tova says.
"The first time my husband and I were able to be together I started crying because it felt so good, and I was so happy. Now I actually know what that feels like. It's been wonderful."
Women talk about painful sex and treatment:
© Copyright 2007-2010. All rights reserved. Last modification: June 16, 2010
