Long term vaginismus - Difficulty getting aroused anymore?
Hey all, I wanted to ask if anyone else has difficulty getting aroused anymore.
I've had vaginismus for a long time, but I've also "forced" myself through a lot of sex while I had it with my ex-partner of 7 years. Basically I started getting the pain about a year in but we continued to have sex and it was sometimes good and sometimes bad, overtime becoming worse and worse (and luckily, the sex less frequent too), with my arousal levels decreasing over time. It was pretty rare for me to be fully aroused before penetration, if I ever was.
Now I'm with someone new (and was with a couple of other guys intimately before my current bf) and find I'm having a hard time getting aroused past a certain threshold. We makeout, but after a certain amount of kissing I don't get any further aroused. I still want to take clothes off and I can pleasure him but I'm not getting much more aroused past the initial bit of kissing, sometimes losing it altogether, but enjoying the closeness/physical touch. I.e it just doesn't feel good most of the time. The standard until now is that as long as it feels somewhat good and not painful, that's something, but after months of this that is no longer feeling like enough to keep trying. I can sometimes feel more aroused thinking about him at home alone but that's getting less frequent now due to the continued disappointment of in-person stuff not working out.
I've heard folks like to do self pleasure to help this kind of thing, but I find I don't have enough arousal/libido/interest right now to be interested in that. Seeing others have sex (e.g TV sex scenes or porn) just makes me kind of sad, not aroused.
Anyone else going through this, or have they been through and recovered? What did you do?