We Need To Talk About Vaginismus | Stellar

Love hurts, but sex can too. Many, many women in Ireland are currently experiencing pain during sex – some have been for their entire lives. And while there continues to be shame, secrecy, and embarrassment when speaking out about such issues, the tide may thankfully be starting to turn, even if slowly.

Harriet* has had vaginismus since her early 20s. Following a diagnosis by her GP, she kept her experience to herself for years, before eventually opening up to close friends and family. Fearful that potential sexual partners would judge her, she avoided dating for a long time – until she realised that most people weren’t as judgmental as she feared.

“Shame grows and flourishes in silence and secrecy,” she says. “We shouldn’t be normalising painful sex, we should be talking about it, because it’s too common. Vaginismus is no walk in the park. I had severe vaginismus for years but it absolutely was not the end of the world, it was treatable, and there was so much I learned in the process. It was the shame that did so much more harm. The embarrassment, the effect on self-worth, the loneliness. We all know how horrible loneliness can feel.

So how are those living with vaginismus tackling that lack of awareness… and loneliness? Once upon a time, opening up to friends and family may have been the only port of call, but now the prevalence of social media has allowed women from across the globe to share their stories with one another, to empathise, and most importantly, to feel accepted. Grace Alice says that if she had had access to vaginismus communities when she was a teenager, she may not have felt so alone.

“Everything I found online at the time was posted by a niche pocket of married heteronormative women who largely wanted to overcome vaginismus to get pregnant. It was amazing to see people talking about it but I was neither of those things. Our initial aim was to recreate that sense of connection and understanding that we both felt, but we also wanted to provide something wider, something that our teenage selves could have really used.

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