The week the pandemic shut down all the schools, I went to the gynecologist. Over the past six months, I had been plagued by non-stop yeast infections, and I had tried every home remedy under the sun to cure myself. Then the gynecologist told me I actually had chlamydia.
The diagnosis started me on a path to recovery that would span years. The chlamydia itself cleared up within a week, but the psychological damage of enduring painful sex for so long remained. My partner at the time was abusive, and did not care about my pleasure, or my pain. Sex had been painful, every single time, for six months straight.
I was ashamed, firstly, when I realized I couldn’t use so much as a menstrual cup without experiencing immense, lasting pain, like a cold, persistent ache.
Recalling my lessons from Family Life courses in middle school that taught me to seek out a doctor if I experienced pain using menstrual products, I booked several more appointments with gynecologists, hoping that the next one would find something wrong with me, or tell me some way forward. Each one only had a vague answer, finding nothing and asking for a followup if the pain continued (it always did). I was sure something was wrong down there, to the point where I asked the gynecologist doing my pap smear to look for scarring. There wasn’t any, and she reassured me that any past trauma I had was unlikely to do permanent damage—after all, vaginas are built to push out babies and heal from them.
My paranoia began to eat me alive. Despite the placations, I was still experiencing pain. To top it off, every time I felt an itch I feared it was a yeast infection, or that I had somehow re-infected myself. I asked the nurse to test me for every STI, just in case they had missed it before. They told me it wasn’t necessary to test again if I had no symptoms, but still, I needed to know for sure that I was in the clear.
I was. But the pain continued.
Over and over I had been dismissed, largely because I didn’t have a sexual partner. It seemed as though the nurses and doctors that attended me didn’t see an issue with my pain because they saw my vagina as a sexual vehicle through which sex or birth is performed. Since neither was happening, I was relegated to the margins, told to come back if the pain persisted with a partner. So, the next time I saw a doctor, I lied.
This time she listened to my concerns, and asked me more specific questions: Did the pain persist in all positions, or were some easier than others? Had I tried using pillows to prop my hips up in a comfortable position? Was I using lube? Maybe my cervix was closer to the entrance than most cervixes (the cervix, she informed me, changes positions throughout the menstrual cycle, and canal length varies between bodies). She did a full exam, providing the kind of care I was used to receiving from a doctor when I came in with an issue.
But at the end of the exam, she came up empty. The best advice she had for me was to experiment with positions and keep trying.
The last doctor visit was both the most helpful and simultaneously the least encouraging. I tried a different tactic with this doctor, being extremely honest and upfront about why I was there. I relayed to her all my past experiences and told her the immense pain that had brought me there. After deciding for me that an internal exam wasn’t in my best interest, she leaned forward and whispered, “Do you need to speak to someone?”
Looking back, I am almost certain she asked with good intentions, but at the time, it felt condescending. It felt like she was invalidating my pain, insinuating it was all psychological. Despite having had years of therapy under my belt, I instantly declined the offer, insisting I would just like to figure out what was wrong with me. I was certain it was physical.
The doctor, who was really a nurse practitioner, offered to go and get the head doctor of the practice. She said he could examine me and, with his decades of experience, hopefully give me an idea of what was going on. “But,” she added hesitantly, “he is male. Is that alright?”
It wasn’t alright. I didn’t want a man anywhere near me, especially not when I was so vulnerable. But more than that, I wanted this over. So I agreed. And I waited. And waited.
The head doctor never came. He was busy and wouldn’t be able to make time. It had taken over an hour for them to relay this to me. The nurse practitioner came back in with the printed resources they always gave me, and on the back she had written down a URL for a local pelvic floor physical therapist. The therapist was out of network, but the website provided me with validating information: this pain was not just in my head. Other people experienced it, too; it was called vaginismus. And it could get better.
Sex was not better the next day—it took a lot longer than that. I had to tackle a number of various issues, starting first with getting to know my own body. Finding the right positions is tricky, too, and it can change throughout the month with your hormone cycle or just the way your body is feeling that day. Medications and mental illness also got in the way, lowering my sex drive to null at times. Talk therapy helped a lot, and I am lucky enough to have a therapist that enrolled in additional courses to find a better treatment plan for me. My partner was patient with me, and understood that sex will be painful at times, but we can switch positions, use pillows or lube, and get intimate in other ways to make me more comfortable. Memories of a time when sex had been good kept me going when it seemed impossible to continue.
It was difficult to admit, but sex was painful for a long time for me, both emotionally and physically. I felt like something was wrong with me, that I was doing something wrong somehow. It took countless doctor visits to learn that I needed to first understand my own body, and then to learn how to trust myself. I had to learn to stop saying, “Thank you so much,” and start saying, “Actually, I don’t understand the results. Can you go over them again with me?” I learned that the sex ed I had been taught was severely lacking, because it didn’t go over what to do when sex isn’t fun anymore. I learned to be prepared for when sex becomes difficult, whether due to injury, sex drive, or disability.
When Michel Foucault wrote, “Tomorrow sex will be good again,” he didn’t mean it to be hopeful. Tomorrow does not guarantee a better day; sex is a constant negotiation of power and embodiment. Still, sex can be good again. But tomorrow’s progress does not come without today’s work. If you’re in a similar position, keep trying—learn more about your body, be open and honest about your pain, and don’t stop advocating for the care and comfort you deserve.
