When Having Sex Feels Impossible: Living with Vaginismus

The following podcast is a DR Media Production. Hi everyone, welcome back to the Real Stuff podcast. Today we have an amazing audience caller episode for you, a lovely woman named Jess who wrote into us about her story of suffering with vaginismus for eight years. It's a condition where it makes sex not only incredibly painful, but in a lot of cases it actually makes it so that you cannot get a penis or anything into a vagina. She talks a little bit about her experience growing up of trying tampons or having gynecological visits where you know the clamp cannot get inside and really I was fascinated by her submission because over the course of my years being a content creator, I have actually heard from a number of people who have written to me that they are dealing with vaginismus themselves and have asked me to create content around it or talk about it to normalize it or to just shed some light on it. Her story was specifically interesting to me because not only did she suffer with it herself, but she also healed it herself after multiple failed attempts of getting professional help. She figured out a way to cure it and she is now a pelvic floor specialist specializing in helping women who are dealing with vaginismus. This conversation was incredibly nuanced and multi-layered because there was a religious element involved. So Jess is Christian and there's a lot of religious beliefs and religious backgrounds that play into at least in her case why she was dealing with vaginismus and I didn't expect this, but the conversation definitely took a major turn and we got into some of the most taboo conversations I've had on this podcast surrounding religion. I am so grateful with the way she received my questions because I was really, I guess, for a lack of a better word pushing back to her on some of her beliefs or just on some of the Christian beliefs in general surrounding sex and marriage, she was really open and receptive to my questions. If you get the chance to watch this on YouTube, I highly recommend it because Jess being a pelvic floor specialist who talks about sex all day, her office setup that she's sitting in was very nicely curated with dilators, things that were just like dildos and crocheted vaginas on the wall behind her and it made for a great visual backdrop. So if you want to watch this one on YouTube, you can always head over to my YouTube channel otherwise if you're listening on Apple and Spotify. I hope you enjoy it. As always, if you like this episode, please head over to Apple and Spotify, consider leaving the show a five star rating, writer of you. We would love to hear what you thought of this and our other episodes. If you're watching on YouTube, please comment down below to let us know that you're here. Let us know what other types of conversations you want to hear in the future and let's just dive right in with our audience caller, Jess. Hi Jess, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. How are you? Hey Lucy, thank you so much for having me. I'm doing pretty well. Thank you. So I wanted to thank you for your submission and for writing into us. It's an incredibly personal topic, clearly a very taboo topic, something that you have been managing and dealing with and now helping other people with. So instead of me reading your submission, can you just kind of go back and tell us all your story of what you told me in the email? Yeah, so I probably could have figured things out maybe a little earlier in my life if I paid attention, but I didn't. I found out on my wedding night that I couldn't have sex. It was incredibly painful, but also incredibly not possible. And looking back, yes, there were some there were some signs like tampons I could do, but they never or something I enjoyed or chose to do because it was so uncomfortable. And then I have been going to the gynecologist since I was 13 for just miserable periods. And the gynecologist was always also miserable and can now vividly remember being held down when I was in my early teens to have an exam performed, which probably contributed to my wedding night being a little frustrating. So yeah, found out on my wedding night that sex was not how I thought it was going to be. And so I'm grateful to have an incredibly supportive husband and we obviously can do other things and have fun in other ways, but I felt it was my personal mission to try and make this work because I think a lot of women are wrongly told that sex is going to be painful. And so I thought, okay, this is what it's like. Everyone's gonna be painful. So let me pop more. I've proven and make this work for me. So the whole honeymoon was just one big journey to get him in, which really made things worse looking back. So we struggled for a while. So this first few months to years of marriage, we would try every now and then, but basically just kind of reverted to other things, which meant that I kind of just felt less than and broken and isolated. I brought it up to a couple friends and didn't get a lot of great feedback. I just kind of got a lot of raised eyebrows and I'm sorry, that's your story. You should see a doctor. So I saw all the doctors and everyone kind of was like, well, everything looks good on our end, but it took four years to finally get a doctor mumble kind of the word vaginismus, which is like, okay, a diagnosis, this is great. Like, give me the pill. Give me whatever it is to fix me. And so then I started a long healing journey. That was not as quick as I'd hoped it was. That involved a whole bunch of different, you know, pelvic floor therapy, and counselors and sex therapists and professionals and stuff. That really just left more question marks than answers. Can we just go back to pre-marriage? I assume you mentioned in your note to me that you were kind of holding off on having sex until marriage for religious reasons, correct? Yeah, correct. Yes. And so before that, was there any sort of activity that the two of you were engaging in that would involve, you know, maybe not having penetrated sex? But for example, like were fingers ever put in or was there anything happening down there that would make you realize, aside from a tampon, being somewhat painful that like, maybe something wasn't normal? Nope. I mean, yeah, that was, it was a shock to me that things couldn't really go in. And so we hadn't done any, I would say kind of more intimate exploring necessarily. And we were, I had every intense, and we had every intention of just kind of waiting for marriage to get to explore, which was fun, to be able to save that and do that together after marriage. And I don't regret that at all, but I wish that I would have had more awareness and comfort with my own body to understand what it needed and what it couldn't do outside of just tampons and a gynecologist. So to whatever level you're comfortable sort of painting the picture for us, can you walk us through your on your honeymoon? You get in the bed, I assume. And then what happens? There was a lot of anxiety. And I would say, it was so hard because you're on one hand, this is the moment, right? Like this is the, the time where you're finally this guy that you just like, you know, been head over heels about and all these things and motions and things have been there for, you know, years you're excited. And it's like, it's all coming down to this moment. And then on the other hand, it's like, there's literally not been nothing inside of me that it comes close to that size. And so there's a bit of panic for sure. Gosh, I actually just, we made a real about this recently about your, your piece of your vagina's response when it sees him for the first time, knowing you've not been able to get any tampon in in the past. And it's like, oh crap. And I think that is right as well. Like where I'm with that. Like there's no, I don't think there's anywhere that's going to fit or get in me. Which probably made it a reality. I had so much anxiety. And like, okay, everyone says it's kind of hurt. That looks like something that would hurt. Given what I don't know about my body, what I've been told by others, I don't see how the mouth's going to add up here. And it didn't. So yeah, it basically, a lot of people describe it as a wall, vaginist and I would say that's what we experienced. It was, it was basically a wall like, you almost kind of are just like, there literally is no hole here. There's nowhere for him to go. I think for a lot of people, the first time having sex is, you know, anxiety inducing. I think a lot of people see if we're talking about a man and a woman and like a penis going into a vagina. A lot of people are seeing that penis being like, how is that possibly going to fit? There's literally never been anything that size. And it's still also just the act of losing your virginity or having sex for the first time is a big milestone moment and definitely anxiety inducing for, I would say, the average person, you know, your heart's racing adrenaline's up. And I think it's normal for people to be afraid and, you know, uncertain about what's about to happen. That said, I also think like a little bit of pain or discomfort can be normal as well. My understanding is that it's literally a muscle down there and it's every time you're having sex, you are somewhat stretching and like exercising that muscle and getting it more comfortable with the act of relaxing, which is what it kind of takes to get the penis to go in. Can you just explain biologically having vaginism as you described it as feeling like there's a wall, but is the actual diagnosis that there is. some sort of cartilage layer or layer of something that's blocking the entrance or is it more just that the actual muscles are so tight that they cannot relax enough to let a penicin? Yeah, good question. It definitely feels like there's some kind of barrier there. But in reality, so vaginismus is kind of under the umbrella of like dysphonia which is pain with sex. It's basically when you're pelvic floor muscles, they're not too small or too tight necessarily. I like to say they're too scared. So it's an involuntary muscle reaction where the pelvic floor muscles contract to keep something out or you can get kind of a burning stinging response as well. And so maybe something can come in, maybe you can get a penis in or a tampon or a speculum or something in. But the response is pain instead of burning stinging, tearing kind of sensation. So you can kind of get either or both of those. But the key I think is it's involuntary and it happens outside of our control. It's not like you can just like, okay, I'll decide to relax now and then magically everything comes in. So it is what you're saying is that it is actually a psychological response to the penis coming in more so than it is physical. They're not being space for it. Yeah, the word psychological can be hard. But yes, I would say there's physiologically your pelvic floor is fine. Sometimes you can have a hypertonic pelvic floor and that can create that pain response and then we have a learned response with vaginismus. But vaginismus would, I would say, is a learned response. It is multi layered and psychological. It is one of the bigger components of it. So when you say that that's a tricky word, is that because then that is now putting blame or onus on the woman and saying, you know, this is your fault psychologically, you're just overthinking it. You're thinking too hard if you just relax. The muscles will relax. Yeah, I think that's the struggle. So for those who have faced pain with sex and who have tried to felt heard in a provider's office or even amongst friends or counselors, there's that looming fear that someone's going to say, well, everything looks fine. It's all in your head. And so I think I'm nice, it's psychologically being the main thing is a struggle because we've all heard it's all in our head. And that's such a hopeless state to be in. And so yeah, there's a huge psychological component to it. There's a huge emotional component. There's a huge spiritual component. There's a huge physical component as well. I would say everything's kind of enveloped into a nervous system response that involves all of that. But yeah, psychological is a larger component of it. So when you're on your honeymoon and this first attempt feels like you're up against a wall, how many more times did you keep trying and what was your takeaway at the end of that first, you know, that honeymoon period? So I don't know how many specific, I mean, we've been married enough for 14 years. So it was a while ago. But it was a lot, I think I was trying because I just felt, I mean, I'm definitely in this is a theme of those, I think you have agonismist, Emma, a go-getter and a publisher, perfectionist, mentality. And so I was like, I'm going to perfect sex on this honeymoon. And this will happen before I get home, which meant it was now my personal mission to make this possible. So probably way too much is what I tried. And I remember, I don't know how many days in we were, but probably halfway through. And actually we went to Turkey for our honeymoon, which was great. And so I had to put Skype credits on my phone to call my gynecologist back home. And so I tried to figure out how I can call my gynecologist, hoping that she answers because you can't just call it off as a not talk to someone we put Skype credits on. So finally, I got a hold of it. My gynecologist was like, okay, this isn't working. What do I do? Like, it's not. And she was just kind of saying, you know, you just need to relax, drink some wine, you slube. You'll be fine. So that was about halfway through. I tried those things and still not fine. We still weren't really successful at getting him in. I think maybe we got the tip in a little bit, but it was so excruciatingly painful. And so, but then in my hand, like, this is the pain that everyone talks about. I just got to keep going, right? Wow. Okay. I'm envisioning you realizing something must be really wrong. And it's not just, you know, that you need to quote chill out or as your doctor said, drink alcohol or use more lube. Like, there's so many more elements to it. And you mentioned that first time that a doctor ever mumbled the word vaginismus. Had you ever heard that word before before they said it to you? And then once it was presented to you, what did that feel like? I think there was hope. I'd never heard the word before. I knew something was wrong. I didn't. I knew like my, you know, friends were all having different experiences. I thought I was too small. I thought I, yeah, I thought that my body just wasn't capable of doing this. And so when I heard there was a diagnosis for it, I, there was hope, I think, finally, because there was a category for what I was experiencing. Whereas before that, I felt like I just didn't belong in any world. I didn't belong as married. I didn't have a body that worked for me unmarried. I didn't have friends who, I just felt alone. And so I diagnosed this gives you hope because you're like, okay, someone knows this condition exists. I'm at least in a book somewhere, right? And so I just had hoped that that diagnosis would lead to a very, very straightforward easy answer to fixing it. And it wasn't so. For people out there who are unfamiliar with the condition and now they're hearing you talk about it and they're thinking, you know, maybe this is what I have because I've been feeling, you know, I've definitely heard from many people in my audience over the years that have described this to me, some of them have used the word others haven't. And I'd love to hear just now knowing all that you know and guiding people who are experiencing this problem as well. Would you say that any element of having vaginismus is coming from past, I don't want to say trauma around sex. That obviously that's not always the case. But is it often that there is some sort of shame around sex or negative emotions or trauma around sex that then manifests as having vaginismus in the future? There definitely can be. If you were to just kind of like search on the internet right now for vaginismus, probably one of the first things that would come up is a history of sexual trauma or abuse. So that would be the biggest, probably, category. I personally don't have a direct history of sexual trauma or abuse. And so I felt in another sense, like I don't even belong in this diagnosis because that's the like biggest thing you see associated vaginismus. And now having, you know, working with women who have vaginismus and painful sex, I can say probably like maybe 80% of my plants don't have a history of sexual trauma or sexual abuse like directly. And so that definitely can be an element to it, but messages of shame for sure can impact it. I work a lot with like Christian women who just have those like really heavy purity culture messages and really have an improper perspective on the role of sex in our lives and our enjoyment of sex as women. And so even that, those messages can have a major impact. I worked with clients who have had a traumatic catheterization, like a urinary catheterization when they were a kid and the brain can't dissociate from that experience that they had to the vaginal canal. And so it's just kind of this big area down there is dissociated from. It can just be like a feeling of that area of my body is foreign. I'm not under, I don't know what I'm wearing this of it. I've never understood it. We don't know how arousal works and so feelings down there have seen foreign. So it really can be, it can even be like you started your period and you're in a white skirt and it was so embarrassing for you. And so you shamed that area because it betrayed you that one day in middle school or something. So any small message or a large event can lead to that, I think nervous system response of protection. Wow. That's really interesting. To the point of what you just said about you not having had any sexual trauma at a young age, but then can we dive into a little bit your religious upbringing? And I know you said you work with a lot of Christian women. Are you Christian yourself? Yeah. Yeah. So can we talk just a little bit about growing up in that religion and in that religious group where I'm assuming it was passed on to you from others that you do not have sex until after you get married, but you were with your partner for how long before you actually got married. You were together three years before we got married. And so I would just love to hear at that time as well as in the earlier years when you were maybe in high school or college, what was your relationship like with sex and what were your thoughts around the shame if anything surrounding it? Yeah. So I think, I mean, my story might be a little different than many others who've grown up in Christian culture. I actually didn't grow up in Christian culture. I became a Christian when I was 18. My dad is Cuban, so there was an influence of Cuban Catholic culture. And he was also in the military. And so there's also a very rural space kind of sense to that. And so I think morally it was just kind of like, you know, don't be irresponsible with this. I think there's a lot of fear of pregnancy that drove a lot of my maybe behaviors before I identified with like the morals of Christianity. You know, in high school I had boyfriends and we would do things but never had penetrative sex. I did actually encounter some fingers that were not successful, but I also had really no idea what was happening. And I looked back on that and like I just thought, you know, hands were wandering. And I realized now like, oh, that's what was happening and it didn't work because my body just didn't let him in. to be clear when you have this diagnosis. I'm gonna call it that. Is it okay to call it that? When someone has vaginismus, you still are having the ability to be aroused or to be turned on. And are you, is that true? A and B, did you have any orgasms in your life from literal stimulation outside of the vagina? - You can be aroused outside it. Like vaginismus is not directly related to orgasms. Unfortunately, a lot of women who have vaginismus aren't able to orgasm because the general understanding of feeling safe in your body with your genitals and your arousal zones is just you're not safe enough to reach orgasm. So I do, I would say, it's hard to put a number on it, but maybe like 30% of my clients aren't able to orgasm. And we work through that once we start feeling safe in our body, but I was able to, there's separate things for me. And I'm grateful for that 'cause that helped me to make sex something beautiful when we got married. But yeah, it can be related, but not, that's all that safety, really. - So are you saying that it's really person to person specific in that there could be a person who has never had any sexual trauma, doesn't have any negative association or shame associated with their genitals at all, and is actually super turned on and able to have orgasms and is dying to have a penis go inside, but it just physically won't go in, yet they are maybe feeling emotionally relaxed and ready and they want it to work. - Yeah, that's possible too. - Okay, so there's really not a one size fits all, no pun intended with vaginismus. - Correct, which makes working with it kind of complicated 'cause it's like, well, everyone looks so different and we can't just say, this is the reason you have it. - Right, yeah. - If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen my posts about the recent family wedding. 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That's viv-r-e-l-l-e.com and use code AllCaps real stuff for 50% off one month of membership. - Okay, so back to your childhood though. Talk us through you becoming Christian on your own accord to 18. - Yeah, so I would probably say it was more like agnostic before. I had growing up, been through a lot within my family of parents divorcing, getting cancer, some a lot of negative things happening. And so I had just kind of succumbed the idea that if there was a God who existed, he wasn't concerned about me and didn't love me. And so there more I wasn't going to be concerned about him. And then, but when I was about to graduate from high school, just I was not in a state of, I don't know, I just had very little joy in my life. I was pretty better and angry, not sure, like looking in the season of transition, like who am I as I'm going off to university? What matters to me? Just didn't feel like I had stability. And I had a friend who invited me to a Bible study and I had made a resolve that I would go to university a happy person and a nice person, basically. And so she invited me to a Bible study and it's like, well, it's just be nice and happy, so I will go. And so I went and the just tender compassionate love I encountered in the people who were there really was intriguing to me. And I'll be honest, I was a brat at that Bible study. I bit hard and questioned everything and they met me with so much tender compassion. And a lady just took me under her wing and had sense that I had been through a lot of brokenness. And she really just sat me down and explained that it wasn't that God didn't love me. It was that God loved me so much that he sacrificed himself for me so that I could have this relationship with him and grow in that love even deeper. And I had never even, I'd never thought it or heard of that part of Christianity before. And so the more I started reading and studying and listening, the more I saw that we, there is this God who's really tender and loving and has this beautiful relationship capacity for me. And so leaning into that is when I decided, okay, I will, I'm going to, I'm gonna follow this. And it really has changed my life in the most beautiful, beautiful way. And so following that is when it was like, started learning about what does it look like to be a Christian and to live this out daily. And wanting to trust what God has said is beautiful in this world and trust that it is beautiful. And one of those things was preserving like sex within that marriage relationship. And so yeah, that was something that was like, okay, if God has orchestrated and designed sex to be something so beautiful, let me trust that within that covenant relationship of marriage. So that's where that came from. - That's beautiful. I'm really happy to hear that you were able to find something that resonated with you so deeply and that, you know, clearly changed the course and trajectory of your life. I think that's amazing. Within the confines of Christianity, you know, I'm not too familiar. I am obviously familiar with the idea that people who are practicing Christianity with whole having sex before they're in the confines of marriage. That said, what would you say are your beliefs and/or the general Christianity beliefs around once you are in a marriage, the idea of having sex with your partner for pleasure versus kids? - Yeah, oh, you'll get a whole bunch of different thoughts about this. I guess without going like super deep into theology and stuff, I really do think like there's a whole book in the Bible called The Song of Solomon that is all about a man and a woman coming together in the most erotically pleasurable scene ever. It's shocking that this isn't the Bible, I think, to a lot of people. So much so that I think a lot of people interpret it as like an allegory, but I do think it's a literal a man and a woman coming together and there's some terms and descriptions in there that are super awesomely ironic and fun. And so I do think like God designed for us to have this as a pleasurable, incredible experience. And with that, I do think like some of the highest joys that we experience in this world are in the bedroom. When you're safe and connected and experiencing that pleasure, I mean, we don't get the high joys of an orgasm in many places except that context. And so I do think like that was given to us as a gift, like women have a whole organ designed to our pleasure. And we can have multiple orgasms, whereas a man is like limited to one and has to share pleasure organ with the pea organ. So it's been a gift to give into us. But I do think that intimacy and sex is the playground of marriage. And God gave that to us in a really super sweet way, super sweet way, and that also can lead to having kids too. So knowing that and knowing that that was your approach to what sex can be inside of a marriage, once you got on your honeymoon and you're married and now you're trying to engage in this incredible erotic behavior and it's just not working, you kind of explained a little bit about how you felt and the defeat that you were going through. But how did that experience affect your relationship with your husband and just your early years of marriage together? - I think in the throes of it, I would have probably said it didn't affect a lot that we had a super awesome friendship still do. And I probably would have said like, "Oh, that's the only issue that's just in the bedroom." And we were intimate in other ways. To me, that always felt like a consolation prize for the big event, which was penetrative sex. Now I can see that penetrative sex is just one of the menu items. Back then, no, because I couldn't do it, it became the more consuming thing for me. But I would say like, I didn't realize the effect that that was causing in other areas of our marriage. And so I definitely had some feelings of resentment. I mean, to get real deep, like I had feelings of resentment against him almost because pleasure could be so easy for him. And yes, I could orgasm. But I mean, the female orgasm is so beautifully intricate that takes a little bit more work than a man's orgasm. And I had pain and I had like the walls in the barriers. And so I just, I think there was this like, man, it's so easy for you. And I think that spilled out into other areas of our marriage. And so having done the work to heal from this, I can now see like, oh my God. my gosh, like really the experience in the bedroom can overflow so much into the different intricacies of all kinds of things in marriage, whether it's parenting or even going off for ice cream. Like those little themes can be present in that, because it is so raw and vulnerable. I mean, just hearing you talk, it's something I haven't really thought too much about. I mean, biologically, between men and women, there are clear biological differences and specifically when you talk about the female body and just how that becomes the vessel for carrying a baby. And obviously a male body doesn't have the biological ability to do that. I've thought about that before, but one thing I haven't really thought about too much is during penetrative sex and just during the experience of having sex, the fact that the female body is, if you think about it, it's kind of like the cave or like this vessel that something else has to go inside of and the male organ just kind of gets to be, I really hope this is coming across properly to people, but like the male just gets to slip inside of this vessel and the woman has to like hold you there. And you are, some might say the man is doing more physically by like actually physically doing the moving, but the female body is like surrounding you and holding all the space for everything that's happening in there. And it really does, I don't know, that was just as you were talking about it, it was making me realize how we as women and with these organs we have, we are like, we have such a huge responsibility in the act of sex. And as you said, it's just so much more complex for us. It's not just in and out, in and out, in and out. It's like, we are the vessel of everything. Yeah. No, I love that. I love that. We just painted with that. And I do hold that, but I also would even say, sometimes it goes against even my thinking of like I mentioned, want to be the doer and the giver and we want to be the ones and sometimes in control. And we often get to step into a different role and be the receivers. Right. And we're not necessarily the doers, even though yes, there's a lot in like relaxing the public floor and taking that in and making sure that we're connected in our mind space when we're having, you know, in order to have more gas and you have to control your mind to be present. In a sense, we also have to step out of the role. That's probably some natural to many of us, which is like the doer, take care of it, make sure, you know, time it, have everything right and we just receive. Right. And so it, yeah, it's, it's a really special thing to, I think, be a woman and enjoy the whole pleasure cycle that it is for us. Absolutely. Yeah, we are a, we are a beautiful container and we have a lot of, we're just the spaceholders. After you get the first mumblings of you have vaginismus, what does the doctor recommend? What was your course of action in order to address this? I think the doctor first recommended seeing a public floor therapist because I, that's the next vivid number I think I have is like going into the public floor therapist office and I was so terrified. And I'm a therapist. I'm an occupational therapist. So I knew about the public floor therapy world. To be honest, I looked at my public floor therapist in the face and was like, I have no idea why you chose this profession. It's so weird. And now it's ironic because this is what I do. But back then I just was so dreading it on so many levels. But yeah, so going to the public floor therapist is the first thing. And can you just talk us through basically exactly what you did to address it? How I healed from it or like what the public floor therapist did? Well, both. First what the public floor therapist did and then ultimately what helped you heal. Yeah, so the public floor therapist and every, you know, public floor therapist is different. Their approach can be different. But mine did jump pretty quickly into doing internal work with me, which is really what I was dreading. And so we did, you know, the pants come off. The, she comes over you and she kind of, you know, she inserts fingers to assess the muscles and stuff and had a hard time getting your fingers in and it was really painful. And then she mentioned that I needed to use dilators, which are like graduated cylindrical tubes. And for people not watching on YouTube, they're sitting on the shelf behind her. Yes, I have a lot of colorful things on my shelf that are dilators now, which is crazy to know that this is our man in my life. But yeah, so I was floored that I had to get these things. This was home and what ears is this? This is probably like 2015, maybe 14. And so vaginismus and pillow floor therapy was not as cool as it is these days. So it wasn't super easy to find dilators. And I remember like, public floor therapists, I said I had to go on a sex toy site. And so I mean, just imagine the flood of shame that just came over me. I'm like, I have to go to sex toys, shut the site to buy these things that I have to practice with. And she was kind to order them to the office so that I could take them home. But I think I did it maybe once or twice and was like, nope, no, no, no, no, no, not going to be part of it. This is too much work. It was so painful. I shut down. I froze. It was hard. Yeah. So I had gone through public floor therapy probably for two years. Where she helped me kind of work through those. I had eventually gotten all the way up to that largest dilator, but I couldn't transition to my husband, which is exhausting, infestating, and discouraging. And when you say you worked your way up to this larger dilator, you basically got to a point where you were able to put them fully inside of you or partially inside of you. But was that while you were in screaming, writhing pain, or you were able to breathe and comfortably have them there? Yeah. I was able to breathe and comfortably get them there. As my body and my nervous system started feeling okay to accept these things in, I could get the equal size to him in. And so I was like, yeah, this is going to work, right? And then when we tried it, it's like, nope, that wall came back up. The pain came back. And it's like, wow. I thought pretty far, but not to the level of function that I actually wanted. Okay. So pelvic floor therapy only could do so much. Then what do you turn to? Well, then it was told it was all in my head. So then I saw, I think we started with a sex therapist. And that was also really rough. The sex therapist, I think we went twice to her. My husband came with me. And she mentioned that we should watch pornography together to learn how to do this. And that was just something we told her we weren't comfortable with doing. So then she questioned our faith a lot. And just kind of said that our faith is probably what's going to limit us in getting past this. We decided to give her one more shot. And then the second time, there was still more boundary pushing. And we were just like, okay, this is probably not the good fit for us. So then we saw Christian Couples' counselor thinking that would probably better align with our faith. And it probably did. We eventually think about where we did individual sessions with the Couples' counselor. And he, in our private session, blamed my husband for my condition and basically said, well, vaginismus is usually because of sexual trauma. So it would, I would have, you know, it makes sense that maybe your husband has, has he ever abused you or has there been a history of sexual trauma with him? Is he too aggressive with you? And my husband is the kindest, most compassionate, tenderhearted man ever and never asked me to do anything that was painful. And most of it was all on my own, oneness of wanting to do this. And I was so upset that that happened. I just couldn't trust this counselor anymore. Yeah, I don't blame you. Honestly, these experiences with these counselors are so upsetting. I don't, I know. I wish I could say that they're the one off and unfortunately so many of my clients had similar stories. Ooh. Yeah. Yeah. And even like my individual counselor, I just didn't know what vaginismus was and didn't feel comfortable talking with sex. So that's usually what I see is. I've seen someone I talked to them that they didn't know how to help me or they mentioned something that made me feel uncomfortable. And then the shame just further envelops you with that. Right. Wow. Okay. So where do you go after that second counselor? Oh, I think I basically just shut down. I think I just gave up. Decided this was not my reality. I just can't have sex. Wow. And then how many years of that went on? Oh, I mean, it was on and off for a while. There'd be periods where we'd get, we'd have a heart to heart conversation and be like, "How do we want to keep. " You know, we just want this in our marriage and intimacy can be so much better, we think. And so I would bump back into the doctor and be like, "Hey, it's still a problem." And they'll be like, "Yeah, well, it's just painful for some women." I did have a doctor once prescribed me amitriptaline, which is like kind of like a brain pain medication, which is probably the first step that I started recognizing. Oh, I don't think this is just a vagina problem. It's interesting. They prescribed me this. It didn't help me. It made my heart rate raced and I couldn't sleep at night and so I eventually came off of it. But yeah, I think it was all in all, I battled vaginisms for eight years. The timeline gets modeled in different things, but it was basically eight years before we could get past it. What was the first moment when you started to notice an improvement in what were you doing? Well, I think what really kicked started it was my husband in such empathetic compassion and just came to me and said, "Just I want everything within me for you to be able to enjoy and to missy." And because I had gotten to the point where he would come up and hug me and I would just flinch. Not again, he was always been so tender, but the pressure and the expectation of, "Is this hug going to turn into a make-out sash, which is going to lead to one thing and another, and I'm going to feel like I'm a failure as a wife again?" And I can't do this basic act that humans are supposed to be able to do. And so we got to the point where I just avoided all kinds of physical intimacy, holding hands, hugging because I was so afraid. I would go to bed before him at night so that he wasn't tempted to want to have it to me. I just was so avoidant of it. And I remember thinking and I made the mistake. telling him this, but I could go the rest of my life without having sex and be totally happy. It was so just regulating for me. And so when he came to me, he's like, I don't want that to be our marriage. I don't want that to be our reality. What can we do? And so that's when I was like, okay, well let me stop just kind of like bumping around trying to figure out treatment things and just succumb to that didn't work for me. Let's try and be proactive about this. At the time I was working as an occupational therapist with patients with chronic pain. And so I had I studied, you know, how brain pain works. And that's what I was doing. I just really didn't make that connection. That vaginismus was more of a chronic pain kind of condition. I just really thought it was messed up, felt it blur. And so my understanding of the diagnosis was what also was limiting me. And I think that being prescribed amateur plane help to kind of make that connection. So then he and I sat down and we basically kind of came up with my own treatment. Just like I would do for him, my client. So we did, you know, what is my problem? What are my goals? What is the treatment plan going to look like? What are the steps we're going to do? And so that's really when we started taking significant ownership of over this and investing a lot of just effort and time and strategy into getting past this. And that's that's what did it. Can you talk us through that treatment plan? Yeah, so my background is an occupational therapy. And OTs are, I think, we're pretty cool because we're pretty holistic in our approach. And so when you see no T, they're going to look at all of you, the domains of what's going on. Not just the musculoskeletal function, but we look at sensory nervous system, you know, the environment around you, the social emotional factors. And so that's what we did. We kind of mapped out all of the layers of the goal and the occupation was sex. And then what are all these things impacting my ability to enjoy sex? And that's when, you know, it stopped being just like things coming in are painful. It started being like messages of shame were spiraling me. My own, just like self-criticism and performance drive was sabotaging me in a sense. And the pressure was putting it myself. You know, my, what did I believe about God and sex and intimacy? I had a lot of resentment and bitterness against God that he promised this gift and it didn't feel like a gift for me. And so there needed to be even like a morning and a grieving of that and an acceptance of where I was in my pain's pain journey. And then I did need to do physical exercises as well and get back into doing dilators, but with a different perspective. And then he, I needed to incorporate Matt in a way that let my body feel safe with him. And so it not shut down every time he touched me. So we had to build up that safety and that connection. And so it really took a holistic like multi-dimensional approach that did incorporate things like dilators and stretches and exercises, but more importantly making sure like every layer of fear and shame that I could, I could find and discover we really kind of came up against that together and met that with grace and compassion instead of performance and expectation. Just from a more tangible takeaway approach, in case anyone's listening to this, obviously there's the opportunity to work with someone like you that can help guide them through this and there's not an approach that's going to work for everyone. But when you talk about starting to get more comfortable with physical touch and things with your husband, is that practically does that look like you carving out time in a day to lie in a bed intimately and be touching each other and just like breathe through it. Like what what's actually happening physically as you're going through these steps? I think that could be an approach for me that would have spiraled and shut me down. That was a bit too probably quick for what my body needed. I had to actually kind of like almost map out like what when he interacts with me, what does my nervous system do? So if he holds my hand in a car, I felt fine because I didn't feel like holding my hand in a car was going to lead to a make-out session or you know holding hands in the produce aisle of the grocery store. Totally fine. Not worried. Holding my hands after we get up from the dinner table panic. Not good, not good. We're not going to go anywhere good for it right now. So that's where it was like okay let's start with that. We had to make kind of almost like a promise to each other like we're actually going to go a season of abstinence where we're not going to try penetrative sex. We're not even going to have that expectation for me so that if if and when he holds my hand after the dinner table, I don't have that fear of that I'm going to have to let myself or him down. I have safety in knowing that that's not an option. And so it wasn't even laying naked in the bed. We got to that point where it was like okay I feel safe now in this but I had to back up even further. And then you know so it might even be like we're cooking dinner together and we try to you know being I try to accept more physical interaction cooking dinner together. And I know that he's not going to ask to progress things into intimacy and so I can feel safe again with this touch. Not I just want to reiterate my husband never forced himself for pressure to a lot of this is my own level of like I felt like I let myself and hand down if I didn't let things progress. So I needed to like go about. 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Yeah I'm trying to so what Sheila Raghagore in the great sex rescue book did a massive study on just kind of different levels of experiences with intimacy. And she found in her study that I want to say it was 17% of women in general experience vaginismus or painful sex and then 23% or 22.0% of women in the church experiences. So numbers are higher with women like church growing women. Which does lead me to believe that there maybe is you know there has to be some component of being part of a culture of religion where there is some sort of shame around that act at least like at various times in life that leads to that percentage being higher correct am I perceiving that correctly. Yeah I would say definitely look a culture or religion that's going to push it as taboo where you don't talk about it so there is shame there's a misunderstanding of how things work and I do think like probably one of the church's biggest struggles with purity culture is we talk so much about don't have sex outside of marriage don't do it don't touch don't look don't do any of these things is all seen as a don't and rarely do we ever share the beauty of the good and the why and so I still stand like I do think sex is a really awesome thing in the covenant of marriage and I'll I'll stand by that but I'm not going to tell my daughter don't have sex with her marriage I'm gonna say if you wait and have sex in marriage is so cool because you're with like a guy that you just trust fully and he is yours and that is so awesome to wait for and instead of that message of like ugh so bad don't do it because how is a woman knowing the levels of intricate like cognitive awareness we need to have to have an orgasm and enjoy it how can a woman go from this is a bad thing to I have a ring on my finger and now I see this a beautiful thing we can't really make that jump and so let's start with it's a beautiful thing do you think that if you had a daughter that was 18 and had a loving boyfriend and wanted to have sex but was not married and wasn't ready to get married that you would have a physical upset reaction to her doing that or do you think you would release that and allow it I think there would be a little bit of like morning in the sense of like there's beauty into things being done trying to think of the right words here I think there would be like a you know this is something that's gonna be truly awesome and beautiful it's kind of like this is probably a bad example but I definitely enjoy ice cream after it's like something that's been awaited for so if I am gonna get ice cream I would much rather have ice cream at like eight o'clock at night rather than eight a.m. in the morning obviously it's good probably both but eight p.m. at night is great because it's like I've gone the whole day I'm looking forward to this I just had a great dinner and so you know that chocolate chip ice cream is gonna be really great then and so there is like if I ate it at eight a.m. and I get past dinner it's like we're already at my ice cream today and it's then it's kind of like oh it would have been really sweet to have this now and so I think that That's kind of like the framework. It's like, you know, there's a little bit of like a, it really would have been sweet in this like covenant relationship that it can be beautiful and in. But I don't think it's the spiral of like you are now like you fall in from grace and it's this massive sin. Kind of thing that is, you know, you can't repent or you can't like heal from. And I think that's the message that gets stuck on is, there's a spiral that happens if it's seen the other way. - And now I mean, I hate to put you on the spot and I don't want this to come across as me, you know, probing at your religion and your religious beliefs. But what do you say to a person like me who obviously was not following the Christian beliefs and Christian faith but had sex with my now husband but pre-marriage. And because of the culture I came from, I didn't have any ounce of shame or religious reason to not want to do that. And so for me, there was no, I guess there is no need to wait. Like the experience was just as sweet and incredible as you're describing that it can be post-marriage but it happened to be just earlier in life pre-marriage. And maybe my situation is slightly different because I ended up marrying him and he has been my only sexual partner. But, you know, I have plenty of friends who slept with multiple people before they found their person. And I think it's just such an interesting conversation because they didn't come from their religious lens so they don't feel any ounce of shame around it. They actually found that was such a sweet experience that I had when I was 18, 19, 20, some of them did get married until 27, 28. And they had multiple partners ahead of that and felt like the experience was great, lovely, felt good. They felt safe, like obviously there are negative experiences but just, I'm so curious for someone who believes deeply in the idea of waiting because of how sweet it can be. Do you also see the flip side of how other people who don't have those beliefs feel that their experience is just as sweet? - Yeah, I could see that. I do think, oh, there's a whole realm of conversation directions we could go and theology and stuff with this. - We're getting into religion the most taboo of topics. - I would know, right? So I would say like, you know, from the Christian belief system, like when you see, like I see marriage through, like God has orchestrated this to be a certain way and that is a covenant we choose to enter into and under the pretence of what the Bible has created. And in that is the sex is one of the categories of it. And so in order to enter into a Christian marriage that is glorified God and is edifying and that is part of it. And so if someone doesn't fall under the, you know, this pretence or this idea or this framework that this is like a Christian marriage, then I don't expect them to uphold to what has been decided as a Christian marriage in a sense. I don't know if that makes sense. Like that, it's just, I would say that's a different category. I do think like in general marriage is really awesome to have that safety and that security of that covenant. But that covenant isn't even like cherished a lot, I think in our current culture. I think it's just, you know, it's a really great contract that we enter into that the contract can break off. And the covenant would be even like stronger terminology. I've like, this is where we are within this and there's this deep, deep connection. I'll try to say a year. - I do see what you're saying. And I think it goes to a wider conversation just about Christianity, which by the way, isn't the only religion in the world that has these beliefs and that sort of covenant. Although from an outsider perspective, someone who's not in the religion, the holes that I would poke in it, I guess, or the things that I would say as to why I personally wouldn't practice it. One, just one thing I can think of is surrounding the concept of divorce. And I think we have a culture where, we just live in this really interesting world where it's societally normal for people to couple off and to get married and form relationships with people. But I think it is wild to believe that all of those relationships are going to be the right match. Like there are so many reasons why something might not work and while I do believe in the power of putting your all into it once you've made that contract and once you agree to it. And of course, I believe in giving it the best shot. I do think there, I personally believe there are scenarios where ending a marriage is the healthiest option for all parties involved or just the, is the best outcome. So that both people can move on and enjoy a happier life. And I'm sure there are plenty of divorced people who would say that that was the best thing that they ever did or the thing that freed them up from a really bad situation. To me, the concept of entering into something and then it being not religiously acceptable or not societally acceptable in your orbit to end the marriage sounds scary to me. That's someone coming from outside of the religion. So I hope that doesn't come across to you as me, you know, poo-pooing your religious beliefs. But I do think it's an interesting conversation that I have yet to have on this podcast. - There are so many layers and nuances and interpretations that go into so much of this that can be sticky, right? Like it's hard to kind of piece through this. But I mean, what you bring up is totally valid. Like if you're not in a safe marriage, that's not good. There is, we are called to be in safe covenants. And so I will just say like for the record, if someone is listening to this and you are in a not safe environment, please like you have every right and God's beautiful earth to make yourself safe. And there are a lot more layers than that, yes. - Absolutely, so many layers. And we could go down so many avenues and I appreciate you even entertaining that conversation with me 'cause that was not what you wrote in about and that's just where it went. But to get us back on track, seeing as at least in my understanding a big reason behind withholding sex within Christianity until marriage is because at that point, we talked about it then being kind of the logical next step is to get pregnant and have kids. So was there a layer in your relationship with your husband as you're going through this vaginism stuff and you're in the early years of your marriage? Was there an added layer of tension and stress of you wanting to become a mom or wanting to get pregnant but being unable to have sex? - Yeah, for sure. Especially when all of your friends start having babies and you're like, okay, great. That's just adds a one more layer of something I really can't do. I can't have sex, I can't have babies, I can't. Yeah, so for sure there was definitely a lot of working through bitterness, jealousy, a lot of big questions. And then only to find help, after a healed from vaginism is to struggle with infertility. And so that, there's a lot more questions like confidence. Like what I've been had struggled with infertility if I could have sex earlier. So yes, there was, there were layers to that too. - There are definite layers. So it sounds like your journey was this roadmap that you set out for yourself with various things you needed to address and it sounds like it was a slow and steady road to recovery. Were you really managing that on your own with your husband or did you have guidance from professionals at that point? - No, at this point I did not feel like I could trust anyone. I didn't feel like I could even really trust friends. It just didn't understand it, but professionals just kind of gave me one of their cliche answers, whether it was all in my head, I need to just drink wine, sorry, there's nothing else we can do. So I just felt like the odd sheep. - Mm, tell us about the first time that you were able to get the penis inside. - Yeah, it was crazy, it was shock. I wish, and I've seen this in my clients too. I wish I could say that it was like this magical experience, but it was more so like what the heck just happened. And then there's doubt and then there's, no, it didn't actually go in like it must have been a fluke. It's not that's not true asking him, are you sure? Yeah, it wasn't magical, it was almost shocking. - Do you remember what it felt like? - I remember there wasn't pain. And I remember feeling kind of like, I just remember like I couldn't feel him inside necessarily. Like it felt, I had to question, are you sure you're in? Like and try and look myself to be like, is he? Like is it actually like real? Like yeah, it was crazy. And then I would say the first time was more like a start or the second time was like, okay, I don't have the expectation for that to work. I don't like that may have been a one off, but I'd be excited if that happened again. And I'll pay more attention to it this time. And so when it happened to second time, it's like, okay, I can start to accept that this might be my reality. I might be able to do this. And then I would say it started getting really fun. And you know, started pairing things with him before and just like this new experience that we had. And it was like, I love it actually when we have clients, if you know, we always say like, okay, now you can enjoy like the newlywed behumps of learning how to have sex because it's like, you know, it's awkward and it's clunky and it's weird. And then, you know, we went actually on, had a second honeymoon and just like really enjoyed this new season and celebrated it. - I can imagine that after the first time when you have confirmation that it actually went in, just how mentally freeing that must be of you getting physical confirmation that it can work and how even just that one time, it gives you such clarity and confirmation. The second time that you now know, physically. this is a possibility and that must have ripple effects mentally. Yeah, honestly, I'd say the first time I had my brain categorized it as a mistake. I'd say the second time was the time I was like, "Oh, wait, I can do this." And then from then, it was just transformative. And it changed even how I saw myself as a woman to be able to do this. Do you remember your first experience having an orgasm from penetrative sex? That came a lot later. I think that that was still an art that we had to kind of figure out I mean, it is, yeah, that just takes practice, I think. And so that wasn't like a, "Okay, let's now make this all time up better and work together better." But yeah, I remember that first time was just kind of like, "Whoa, there's. " It's just so interesting, especially knowing that I was in this journey of can't and pain to where it is now. And it's like, I almost like, I feel like I just cherish and crave that connection deeper. And it still doesn't even have to be penetrative sex. It can just be that connection without the looming frustration and shame and spirals that I had. It's beautiful to be free of that now. And then at what point did you pivot in your career and say, "I now want to start helping other women who are going through this?" So after a heal I was like, "I'm never talking about vaginas since again. I'm out. Peace out. Like, in the past, I'm done. It wasn't actually until a few years ago. I went to get coffee with a friend from church. I didn't know her that well. And I asked, "Well, what kind of periphery for? What's going on?" And she opened up and shared that she couldn't have sex with her husband. She didn't marry her for three years. And I was just shocked. I asked if she was like, "Do you have vaginas? And she's like, "Yeah." And I was like, "I have never met anyone else who's had vaginas. Like, what?" And so she shared in her journey what she'd been up against. And it was oddly similar to mine and what she had heard from healthcare providers and public flight therapists in the church and just similar messages. And I just wanted, I started crying. It was like, "I'm so sorry. It's been your journey. Let me tell you what worked for me." And so kind of walked her through and just gave her a sense of like, "You're not alone." And my husband was actually the one who you like to ask. I think your story could help so many women who feel so alone in this space. Women who've had their faith come like questioned because of this or been told to do things they don't morally feel good about or just feel like they don't have this basic biological thing they can do. And so my husband was actually the one who was like encouraging me to step into this space. And so I started learning more about public flight therapy and I created an Instagram account and it just people showed up and said, "Me too." Wow. It's a lot of us. It's amazing. How do you feel your background and the circles that you run in and your religious community plays in at all to what you do today? Do you still carry any shame around educating people on this or talking about it? I think there's both. I think I do have to kind of just watch. I will have that spiral come in sometimes and in this shame of like, "Okay, I just I talk about my sex life on the internet and that's kind of weird and not a place I thought I'd ever be in." And so there's like trying to accept that, yes, I talk about my personal sex story online, but for the purpose of being able to really help women enjoy this beautiful, awesome gift that they have. And so I think if I can like, if I can reframe it really enough, I don't think too much about it. I'm just like, "But I get to change life." And that's great. And so I think like, yeah, it is weird being a Christian who talks about sex on the internet who has like a crocheted vagina behind my head and who is not afraid to remix company, talk about all the things that's like, I think that makes some people squirm. But it's what needs to happen in order for women to feel supported in the church and outside of the church when it comes to infusion sex. I was gonna say you've got to be pushing some buttons, being a Christian, having some dildos on your shelf. Yes, I do. I think I make a lot of people squirm. And I love it, because we need to squirm more so that we feel more comfortable actually sharing what sex should be like and the beauty that I can be. I love it. We are aligned. And I also love, thank you for going into some of the more complex complicated, multi-layered topics on this interview because it makes me want to have more discussions about religion. I think I can learn so much from hearing other people's beliefs. And I just think it makes for such an interesting conversation for others to listen in on to hear two people who have conflicting beliefs because I'm sure there are many points in what you're saying and what I'm saying that people from the outside would feel like they align with and agree with. And so it really is fascinating. And I appreciate you writing in. Can you tell our audience where they can find you online if they want to learn more about what you're sharing? And if you are taking new patients or clients, can they apply to work with you somehow? Yes, so you can find me at painfreeantemacy.com or on the [email protected]. We have a whole bunch of free guides and resources on our website. But yeah, on the website you can find a link to schedule a free consultation if you want to work together and learn more about how you can get past the pain of the drama. Amazing. Well, thank you so much. I really think the work you're doing is so important. And in my opinion, all the best work and the best teachers come from people who have actually themselves struggled with that in the past and healed themselves. So it's really amazing to see how far you've come. And I'm so happy to hear that you are having good sex today. Thank you. Thanks, Lucy. And thank you for making a space to have hard conversations that have layers. Because it is hard to, you know, when you do have a faith that you feel strongly about to step into a space and to feel like that faith can be met with a mutual just a grants of like, hey, we're going to speak in compassion here. And in my journey as a Christian facing this, I didn't experience that and it was hard. And so thank you for creating a space where people can share their stories and there's a fit's met with grace. Of course, always. Thank you for coming on. We loved having you. Thanks. Thank you so much for tuning in to the real stuff podcast. If you're liking the show, please head over to Apple or Spotify and leave us a written review. If you're watching on YouTube, drop a comment down below and join in the conversation. And if you're feeling called to be a guest on the show, visit LucyThink.com/apply and tell us your story. Thank you so much as always for sharing your time and attention with us and we will see you next time on the real stuff podcast. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.