When is intimacy painful? by Pauline Ryeland

No-one should be experiencing pain with intercourse and we need to investigate what is causing this.

The last thing you feel like is having sex when there’s pain. There’s two reasons for this, the first most logical one is that it hurts and the other is that your libido switches off.  The libido switches off because the neurological pathways between the brain and genitals are picking up the signals of pain, so it switches off as a protective mechanism.

Some questions you can ask yourself:

• Does the pain happen all the time?
• Is it only some of the time
• Does it happen only in certain positions
• Am I fully aroused
• Am I lubricated enough

As we start to go through peri, pre and menopause the estrogen we produce lessens.  This impacts our vaginal wall as we start to lose elasticity and collagen growth in the vaginal wall.  This in turn affects how lubricated we are on arousal and so if we have intercourse and are not fully aroused and engorged in the whole of the vulva, clitoral area then it can create what I call internal chafing.  This leads to becoming painful. There are other things that can create vaginal pain which can come from adhesions formed from surgeries anywhere in the body.

Adhesions are a little like octopus tendrils and travel throughout the body, through muscle, fibre, tissue, tendons and can attach to organs and bones.  Sexological Body Worker’s are trained  to start breaking down those adhesions.

Other factors that I take into consideration when assessing vaginal pain are:

• Episiotomies or natural tears with childbirth
• Miscarriages
• Abortions
• Painful periods
• Endometriosis
• Pelvic floor pain
• Lower back pain
• Coccyx pain
• Vaginisumus
• Vulvodynia
• Vaginal atrophe
• UTI’s
• Lichens disease
• Cancer in the genitial area
• Hysterectomies
• Ectopic pregnancies
• Any surgeries where adhesions have formed

When pain is present it can also create genital numbness or inflammation internally.

So if you’re experiencing pain, how do we reverse that so you go back to having pain free sex?

There are several approaches I take to reverse this and once all the above considerations are taken into account a plan can be created to move forward.

The good news is that it is 100% reversible and you can go back to having a normal sex life again!

Pauline Ryeland, Intimacy Whisperer