Vaginismus & Concerns About Wedding Night

danielsaid · 2022-10-03T23:48:43+00:00

Don't let her worry about it, act like you don't care if you do it that night or later. There will be plenty of things to enjoy besides the "main event" so start there. Even if you can't stick your ding dong in her hooha I'm sure you'll find something you both enjoy.

If you overthink it, it will DEFINITELY not be fun. So don't go in with a plan or a goal or anything like that. Just enjoy your wife

Deep_Strength · 2022-10-04T14:54:59+00:00

Some things that may help:

Physical therapy for vaginismus
Total body massage - relaxes the whole body which should help relax vaginal muscles as well. Possibly massage/foreplay to the vaginal area as well. Also can double as foreplay
Don't use alcohol

What everyone else has said about the experience is good though.

Red-Curious · 2022-10-06T04:41:39+00:00

Mission - Excel in my career as an actuary, raise a healthy, God-fearing family, live out my heritage, and constantly improve.

If you're at all familiar with me, you know I can't let this go. Read Matthew 4:19 - "Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." Now, re-read your own mission. Jesus said if you follow him you will become a fisher of men. Is that part of your mission or not? In secular red pill, trying to "excel" and "constantly improve" sounds like a good mission, but it's ultimately aimless. What standard are you comparing yourself against to know you've improved? If there is no standard, there's no way to know if you've improved or gotten worse. If Christ is your standard, then Christ-likeness is your mission - you are improving to become like him. This includes not only becoming like him in "sinning very little" - there are some people who commit very few "sins" yet their lives look nothing like Jesus. It must include also adopting purposes aligned with Christ's purposes. Look at my previous comment before this one in my history. I go into more detail on this in there, but the short-and-sweet of it is that you can't "raise a healthy, God-fearing family" if you aren't leading your family the same way Christ leads the Church - and you can't say you're leading them as he does if you haven't adopted the purposes he had. His purpose was to build a Kingdom for Himself, called the Church (capital C). It is our job to do that also, which is expressed through the great commission: "make disciples of all nations."

The only thing I need a woman for above is raising a family.

When God gave Adam a purpose he said it was not good for him to be alone and said, "I will make a helper suitable for him." If your wife has nothing to do with your mission than give you children and be a mom, you are severely limiting the role God has for her in your life. If your wife cannot do what God designed her to do, she WILL become restless and dissatisfied with you and your marriage will be greatly troubled. Nobody can be satisfied in life who is not able to live out the purposes for which God has designed them.

More to the point, if your mission is so small that you don't need your wife's help on it, then you aren't thinking big enough for God's Kingdom. I've always loved this quote from Dawson Trotman:

Do you know why I often ask Christians, "What's the biggest thing you've asked God for this week?" I remind them that they are going to God, the Father, the Make of the Universe. The One who holds the world in His hands. What did you ask for? Did you ask for peanuts, toys, trinkets, or did you ask for continents?

I want to tell you, young people, it's tragic! The little itsy-bitsy things we ask of our Almighty God. Sure, nothing is too small - but also nothing is too big. Let's learn to ask for our big God some of those big things He talks about in Jeremiah 33:3 - "Call unto Me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things that you do not know."

Think on that for a while and re-contemplate your mission. If your only ambition for God's Kingodm is to have a cozy little job with your cozy little family and to "improve" in some ambiguous way that doesn't really speak to what you're improving toward ... how do you intend to answer to God when you are called to give an account of your life on Judgment Day? Make no mistake, the Bible is clear that believers will be judged according to what we do also, not just the unbeliever. Here's a very brief (under 4-minute) video that will go further into what I'm talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_uwWPE6lQ (Francis Chan ... good stuff).

Onto the actual question ...

My question is about vaginismus (involuntary tensing or contracting of muscles around the vagina, which can make sex impossible).

Can ... but doesn't always. In most cases, sex is still possible, but painful. My wife and I dealt with this early in our marriage. It's a predominantly psychological issue that can (and usually will be) self-resolved in time as the fear and anxiety of penetration resolves. At first, it's a nasty feedback loop because the anxiety heightens the tension, which then increases the pain, which then justifies the fear and anxiety so it's remembered the next time you go to have sex. But the pain typically goes away once penetration is complete (it's only during insertion that it's a problem, for most people), which makes it easy to adjust to the initial pain, knowing it'll go away - and as that initial pain becomes a quick over-and-done, the anxiety goes away because it normalizes. When the anxiety alleviates, the vaginismus alleviates with it, and will eventually cease to become an issue altogether.

At the risk of being crass, have you ever taken a dump and wiped your butt too hard and your sphincter tenses while your face makes a weird grin? It doesn't actually hurt in that moment, but you feel like it's going to, and it's an awkward feeling altogether, hence the look of pain across your face even though you're really fine. That's not too different form vaginismus. You and she note you're virgins, which means she's not used to having anything outside of her control penetrating her, and that's going to cause an initial reaction. But the same way you can learn to wipe yourself without wincing, she will, in time, be able to experience a comfort with sex.

I've never heard a case of vaginismus that didn't naturally resolve fairly quickly (a matter of weeks). In my marriage, it was probably longer than most, for unique reasons. But even in our longer-term circumstance, it self-resolved without the need for any dilators. It's more common than you might think for virgin women to be unable to have sex on their wedding night, or even during their honeymoon.

She has been using dilators for a few months with some progress, but she expressed frustration that she can't fit the final size (i.e. close to me) no matter how hard she tries not to tense up.

You also have to remember that this dilator method is in a vacuum. My guess is that she's not particularly aroused while using them. Arousal causes natural lubrication and greater elasticity. I expect she's using lubrication with the dilators, but it's nowhere near as effective as natural lubrication. When she is both aroused and naturally lubricated, things will be MUCH easier than in the sterile-ish dilator context.

My recommendation: on your wedding night, do your best to try to make intercourse happen. Start slow and minimize any risk of anxiety. Get her worked up before you contemplate insertion - preferably even to the point of finishing once from external stimulation alone. Don't get worked up about it if insertion doesn't work out. If she feels guilty that she couldn't have intercourse on your wedding night that can create a painful negative psychological association with sex that will take you years to overcome. No shame or guilt over the issue - just keep working at it. Make it a fun experience playing with each other's bodies - both in having other ways to enjoy sex while working through the issue, and also in working toward actual intercourse together. Treat it more like a tease than a problem.

Rifleshoot · 2022-10-04T00:04:19+00:00

Pretty sure this is something my wife has, and it can suck sometimes. She gets in enough pain that we’ve had to stop midway and switch to a BJ. But other times, she takes it like a champ and begs for more. It’s not something you can control. I will say that as my own attractiveness has gone up, it’s gotten a little better, but it’s still there. If it’s something you can deal with, then deal with it. If not, then don’t.

Which_Honeydew_5510 · 2022-10-04T01:29:44+00:00

Second about trying to act like you don’t care. Acting like you care that the “main event” can’t be done (or that it’s all you care about) can make her even more tense, making it worse. Has she ever been to a pelvic floor physical therapist? I think they should be able to help with vaginismus since they deal with muscles in the pelvic area.

TheBunk_TB · 2022-10-04T16:53:11+00:00

Polite suggestion: Adjust accordingly, take things slowly

brennybren · 2022-10-04T21:16:29+00:00

How does she know she has vaginismus?

Proper_Screen · 2022-10-05T12:20:33+00:00

This sounds like my wife. I don't know if it was vaginismus (no diagnosis) but she was extremely tight (not in a good way). She used a dilator set before we got married but couldn't progress beyond a rather small size (smaller than me, at least). Sex wasn't much fun for her at first. It hurt, and I had to go slow and be very patient. But each time we did it it hurt a little less, until it wasn't painful at all, as long as I got her warmed up first.

So, yeah, PIV on your honeymoon probably won't be all fireworks. It's not much fun to get done and realize she's crying. ("It was good. It just hurt too.") Find other fun things to do. Bring some basic lube.

Praexology · 2022-10-04T14:22:05+00:00

Let's cut through all of the extra stuff:

I am worried about the possibility that sex won't be possible on our wedding night/honeymoon, and even after that.

If she is experiencing it now, there is a high probability it will happen later. If sex cannot happen between you two, is that a deal breaker? It would be for me now.

Just because a situation is sad for someone else, doesn't mean you are morally, or scripturally, obligated to tie yourself together with this person forever. There is a good chance that since she cannot secure PIV sex, the BJ's will die eventually, so if you are going to go through with this, you don't get to complain to her after this point.

Has anybody else encountered this problem as newlyweds? How should I prepare for and react to this possibility?

Dealt with this for the entirety of my honeymoon. We only achieved PIV the last day.

If it went on for a few months w/o sex, there is a good chance I would have left the marriage.

She has debt, sex problems, is older than you . . . She better be emotionally and socially near perfect before I would hitch my wagon to hers.

Title	Vaginismus & Concerns About Wedding Night
Author	unexpected_value
Upvotes	17
Comments	29
Date	October 3, 2022 10:50 PM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/RPChristians
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/RPChristians/comments/xuy0b1/vaginismus_concerns_about_wedding_night/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/RPChristians/vaginismus-concerns-about-wedding-night.1135204 https://theredarchive.com/post/1135204