Every Tuesday, I’d head to a gym filled with young athletes and senior citizens strengthening and stretching their joints.
I’d go into a small room, take off my pants, and lay back on a bed. Then I would get fingered. Surprisingly, this is not some new fitness trend or subscription service offered by Goop. This is my physical therapy.
I have vaginismus — a painful condition that’s somehow worsened by its name.
Spasmus is the Latin word for spasm, and vag comes from vagina, so I have vagina spasms. The spasms are small and nearly undetectable but indicate an involuntary tightening and contraction of my muscles around the pelvic floor during penetration.
Simply speaking, sex is painful. I have only known it to be painful. To all the men I’ve slept with: it was all a lie. I faked it the entire time. But I didn’t want to lie to you; I just didn’t want something to be wrong with me.
The pain is similar to losing your virginity, but not as aggressively intense and confusing. Perhaps it’s like having sex the second time ever, just that every time is like the second time.
The pain is intrusive; it feels like someone’s pushing and kicking on a bruise at the center of my body, breaking the tissue inside of my skin. It feels unnatural and brutal. This pain has been a part of me more than love, passion, or pleasure; every new adventurous position is just a new place to discover more pain.
I don’t make love to someone. I endure pain.
The thing with talking about sex and pain, is that people always find a way to insert their unsolicited opinions deeply into my problem.
Have you tried more lube? Not needed, I’m a slip n’ slide on a dry day. What about foreplay, is there enough foreplay?
The guys I’m with know where they belong. Do you have sexual drive? If I were stuck in a middle of a dessert, I could fill that dry space with my passion and hunger and pull water from earth to grow trees that are lush and wild simply by my desire and drive.
And my favorite: you just need to relax! which is a stupid thing to say. You might as well advise someone getting choked to try breathing. If only I had blasted Enya during missionary or clutched an amethyst crystal while getting rammed, then my pain could have been released into the rhythm of the world while my pleasure remained in the rhythm of mine.
I wish I was just imagining it, but this pain was my only constant sexual partner.
Sex is inherently pleasurable.
Its function is reproduction, but its purpose is pleasure. We’re made to believe that by everyone we talk to, by the movies and shows we watch, by the songs we sing, and by every book and magazine that crosses the PG-13 level. To think that it may actually cause pain between two consenting adults disobeys this natural law. Pleasure is a God-given and guaranteed cause, constitution, and consequence of sex.
But almost 75% of women will experience pain during sex in their lives, and we barely talk about it.
Vaginismus is one of those underlying reasons: it can be caused by a sexual assault/trauma, shame, stress, menopause, or just because. It can be something you’re born with or something you develop for a reason or not later in life. Most importantly, vaginismus is a musculoskeletal issue. Vaginismus, no matter the cause, is a physical problem requiring a physical solution.
But vaginismus often fell — and still falls — exclusively into the psychological field, to the point that doctors not more than a decade ago just threw antidepressants at patients, which is a harmful cop-out that could only worsen a woman’s view of her own sexual worth.
My vaginismus is simply a result of my design — a random curse placed on my deep desires.
There is a psychological element to my condition, since pain is my only associated feeling with sex, so my muscles obligingly obey this self-fulfilling prophecy.
But, to think that I can think away the pain is a foolish and reckless idea: it deprives my pain of scientific stature and gives authority to that hateful inner thought that it’s just in my head and “so there’s just something wrong with me.” That all I need to cure myself is to mechanize my thoughts into pleasure and open myself to the healing powers of a good dick.
For so long, I thought there was something wrong with me, with what I’ve built and who I’ve become. I thought I was broken goods unworthy of the company of a patient partner and pleasurable sex. I felt defective and lonely. I blamed myself and I blamed the gods for this strange and wicked curse.
I was angry at myself. I was angry at everyone. But now I know that this is a physical problem beyond my mental power and me.
This is a real condition that plagues many women with complicated causes that deserve to be discussed and addressed in medical institutions, classrooms, bedrooms, and entertainment.
Vaginismus, though it has a name, is still an under-researched condition full of confusing and abstract details. First of all, Microsoft Word awards it with the red squiggly line of WRONG as I type it out right now.
Netflix’s show “Sex Education” does an incredible job exploring the nuances and awkwardness of sex, and a character experiences vaginismus but only in the context of her fear. What’s worse is that so many of my doctors don’t know the name, either.
I went to multiple OBGYNs desperate for answers and insight. These doctors recommended more lubrication, different sexual partners, or relaxation. They all attributed my pain as a character flaw, not a physical issue.
I cried in their sterile offices.
It took me years to hear the mush mouth sound of vaginismus. After about six years of inquiries, I was finally directed to a pelvic floor doctor who appeared afraid of vaginas and more interested in charging me high, out-of-network fees for shots, pills, and treatments beyond my budget, than actually diagnosing me properly.
Then I got a bit more creative in my search for relief. I bought lube with THC from Colorado that was supposed to ease pain and heighten orgasms. My vagina just reeked of weed. When I opened my legs, it smelled like Snoop Dogg had just opened his. And then it craved a burger.
When doctors and THC didn’t work, I tabled my vagina for a few months. I gave up. That doesn’t mean that I was immune to the shame and emotional pain I felt from my condition: I couldn’t engage in girl talk about sex, I hated hearing about other people’s causal experience with “bad sex”, and I felt isolated more than ever. I felt relentlessly inadequate.
After eight years of painful sex, I decided to reignite my search for an answer.
I finally told a few partners about my condition. I’m not sure if they didn’t care or if they didn’t get it. They had a great time — and it always ended up being a long time. Maybe they thought if they fucked me longer, the pain would subside.
After all, how could something that felt so good for him, possibly feel bad for me?
I was fed up and decided to find a diagnosis and a cure, no matter how many more doctors I had to face.
After a few referrals, I found my physical therapist.
In our first session, she performed the first comprehensive exam that affirmed more than just the existence of my vagina. In that exam, my physical therapist could detect the small spasms, and so could I. I thought she was tapping her finger inside of me, but that was vaginismus. With her, I finally received clarity and hope. Then we began the process of recovery.
I saw my physical therapist once a week every week for seven months. Our sessions began in a private room, with a massage table made into a bed, pillows, and a modesty blanket. My physical therapist would put on gloves and a dollop of lube, and in she went.
My friend told me she imagined my finger-forward therapy to be like pottery making: the wet clay spins and spins as “Unchained Melody” heaves with momentum, and fingers slowly pinch and push the clay into a nice vaginal vase. Kind of like that but with less Patrick Swayze.
The process is similar to working through a tight knot. It’s important to note: some guy can’t enter your life and vagina with good intentions and eager fingers and try to “fix” you.
My physical therapist was carefully trained to do this work. She pushed, with varying degrees of pressure, into my muscle in a calculated way. To my physical therapist, it felt like she was pressing on steel. She’d push through that tightness and could feel when my muscles were giving in to the pressure. Sometimes I had to coordinate breathing with certain finger movements to train those muscles to (I hate the word but let’s do it) relax.
And yes, it hurt it badly.
After about 15–20 minutes in the private room, I’d head to the communal gym (fully clothed) and do some stretches and exercises. It was nothing too salacious, but I often wondered what the other clients thought of me as I used a rolling pin on my inner thigh.
I had daily homework consisting of stretches, breathing. I bought dilators that come in five increasing sizes with tiny magnets on the inside (and in a pinch, they make decent fridge magnets!). They’re called neodymium magnets: the idea is that our blood has iron and our body has electromagnetic energy. The magnets attract fresh oxygenated blood to a place that needs healing.
It all sounds like wellness magic, but I was — and am — willing to try out anything to give my vagina a lip up in its pursuit of pleasure.
I used them every day, going from one size to another every week, reaching the final level with the biggest size (about the average size of a penis).
One night, I completed my PT homework with the largest dilator listening to the BBC’s Global News Podcast (admittedly, I should have created a more sexual environment, but it can be exhausting to feign arousal daily for a pink, plastic dildo). When I first started with this dilator, it was just as painful as sex. Over the weeks of daily use, that pain would become increasingly muted. On that crisp winter day, the pain didn’t show up at all.
Somewhat quietly without notice or announcement, my pain was no longer mine. At 2 am in the morning, this life-changing thing happened and I was listening to the news.
I was in awe. Physical therapy works. It fucking works.
I imagined progress only because I wanted it, not because I thought it was actually possible. Despite my deep hopelessness and skepticism, my body proved me wrong. Penetration is no longer painful and it’s actually crazy. There are still some areas of discomfort, but my body has responded to the treatment in ways that my mind could never have.
If you need any proof that vaginismus is more than a psychological problem, that the issue and the solution lie in our physical architecture, then I’ll fuck me twice and tell you, it doesn’t hurt.
But now I’m facing my next task: I have to introduce pleasure into my body. It will take time. I’m not in a rush. I’m comforted that a friend who once had vaginismus not only has pain-free sex but pleasurable sex, too.
That doesn’t mean I’m not scared: I’m terrified of the nothingness that I may experience with sex.
I’m so scared I’ll find someone I care about and it’ll still be painful. I have to install pleasure into a place that has only given me pain. I feel like I’m learning a new language by making it up completely. And as much as I can imagine and create, I just don’t have the tools to get me to where I think it should be pleasurable.
But, I’m also at the dawn of a completely new sexual revolution, my sexual revolution: a virgin voyage seeking different waves of pleasure in places that were once dark with pain.
My last physical therapy session was my graduation…
I popped champagne at the end of it all. I also cried as I rang a celebratory bell to all the other patients who clapped. I was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude that I never thought I’d have the opportunity to experience. What my physical therapist has done is incredible — I will always be grateful to her. What I will have to do next is still daunting — but I have defeated pain.
I do know that sex will have to be extremely honest when I have it: I need a patient and open partner who can work with me touching and holding new senses.
It’s actually kind of sexy to think that all these things will be new to me and that I’ll get to take him down my roads and paths, with my power and presence.
Maybe I’ll actually fall in love and get to consummate those feelings, or maybe I’ll just become a sex addict and hump whatever I find. But I put trust and pleasure and love into my hands, and now it’s in my vagina, too.
– KG
