When Everybody Isn't Doing It
How three women have coped with painful intercourse
(continued from previous page)
Resisting the way society attempts to label their relationship seems to have taken an emotional toll, however. Elise blames vaginismus for usurping her initially healthy attitude about sex. “The mere fact that it’s something you can’t tell anyone because you wouldn’t want them to judge you negatively has this effect on you,” she says. “You start to associate [any kind sex] with failure and frustration.”
Eric says that, while the lack of intercourse isn’t a problem for him, a waning of any physical intimacy at this point in their relationship does concern him. He wonders if by not forcing the issue, he may be enabling her in part. “It’s not for nothing that the perceived cultural wisdom is that the guy tends to be the impetus for sex in most relationships,” he says. “I worry that by striking the balance that I strike—to not push her into anything—that I’m contributing to the problem.”
For now Eric has accepted things as they are and is for “get[ting] around the problem to the extent that Elise wants to and to the extent that she doesn’t.” There’s still the option for Elise to complete her treatment. It’s very common for women to start and stop treatment several times before finally conquering vaginismus.
But for now, Elise refuses to allow intercourse to define her. “Even the articles that I’ve read on vaginismus, there’s always this narrative in which there’s this woman who is broken and now she’s fixed and the ultimate goal is so she can have intercourse with her partner. And I think that assumes so many things. And I did not want this to be my narrative so I stopped going to physical therapy.”
So what does Elise want her narrative to be? “I’m still trying to figure that out,” she says.
She says she does not fear never getting past vaginismus physically. “I worry that I will never fully come to terms with it psychologically.”
If she tries hard enough, she could have a “normal” sex life, she says. “I’m constantly trying to figure out what is normal, and do I want to be normal and what happens if I’m not normal.”
