Vulvodynia and Me

“I’m never going to have sex.” It was the evening after my sex education class in fifth grade. My sweet, approachable teacher had tentatively brought up the idea that some people thought sex felt good, and my mind was reeling. This was a preposterous lie, I knew–sex was a necessary evil that some people went through in order to have children, and I wasn’t going to be one of them.

“Don’t you want to have a baby someday?” My mother probed, probably assuming my apprehension was due to that typical childhood disgust of cooties and romance.

“I’m going to adopt,” I told her resolutely. Even before I understood the logistics of sex, I had a vague idea of how babies were born, and I’d made up my mind at a surprisingly young age never to procreate. I didn’t dislike children–I just couldn’t picture myself giving birth.

The disconnect between my body and my desires only deepened when I went through puberty. Outwardly, I wasn’t any different from my middle school peers. I idolized Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp (this was the era of the first few Pirates movies) and the rebellious boy in my grade who skipped class to smoke on the playground. My pastimes included watching striptease videos of a voluptuous woman named Keyra and fantasizing about whether the cute boys in my classes wore boxers or briefs.

But the idea of putting anything inside my vagina left me deeply uncomfortable. I couldn’t watch porn because seeing something as big as a penis inside someone else’s vagina made me squeamish. Even lesbian porn left me squicked due to the haphazard way the women raked their long, sharp fingernails over–and even more horrifyingly, into–such sensitize flesh. Everyday experiences such as going to the gynecologist, watching childbirth scenes in movies and discussing female genital mutilation in class left me unbearably anxious.

Eventually I decided this was a personal flaw and I just didn’t have the balls to have sex. Medical professionals reinforced this viewpoint: even gentle investigations of my genitals left me in serious pain, but my protests were never taken seriously. One nurse even told me my problem was that I was “uptight.”

It wasn’t until the first time someone tried to get me off that I knew something was wrong. I hadn’t dated much, assuming that nobody would be interested in a girl who couldn’t have sex. But when a guy I’ll call Dweezil asked me out, I knew I had to take the chance. Dweezil was astoundingly hot as well as funny and charismatic, so I’d been harboring what I thought was an unrequited crush on him for months. Our impending date left me incredibly turned on and too excited about getting intimate with him to worry about my pain.

As it turns out, Dweezil was as amazing in bed as I’d thought. Our first kiss left me wetter than I’d thought I could get, and the chemistry between us only got steamier from there. Soon enough he had his hand in my panties, caressing my clit–and while I liked what he was doing, it didn’t feel good. In fact, it hurt, even when I told him to be gentler.

To some extent, I could understand not wanting to be penetrated. But I knew clitoral stimulation was supposed to feel good, was supposed to lead to mind-blowing orgasms the likes of which I couldn’t even imagine.

So I swallowed my pride and mentioned my problem to my gynecologist’s nurse practitioner. Almost immediately, she placed a pamphlet in my hands and told me I had vulvodynia–one of many female sexual disorders involving vulvar and vaginal pain and sensitivity. The pain is difficult to treat and it will take years of physical therapy before I can attempt to have PIV (penis-in-vag) sex.

But somehow, my diagnosis was reassuring. Having vulvodynia means that there’s nothing wrong with my sex drive or my sexuality. I’m a fully sexual person who just can’t have vaginal sex, and that’s okay. (Besides that, I have friends who don’t enjoy PIV sex, or who don’t feel safe having it, and that’s okay too.)

There are thousands of people who can’t–or don’t want to–be vaginally penetrated. But that in no way means that people who don’t engage in vaginal sex can’t have hot, active sex lives. Despite my therapy, I’m still in pain almost constantly, and on most days involving my genitals during sex is difficult or even unthinkable. But my sex life isn’t deteriorating: on the contrary, I can’t imagine how it could be better. And that’s why I created this blog: to showcase how to have an amazing sex life that doesn’t include vaginal sex.