Regular expected or vaginismus?
Hi, so I learned this medical condition a few weeks ago and just wondering if I have it. I’ve never had intercourse. The only penetration has been the “light” Tampax tampons I used back in high school. The insertion was fine with no pain but I stopped using them because my period wasn’t heavy enough to soak them so they would hurt sometimes pulling out. I’ve also tried one finger penetration with myself and that was fine, no pain. The thing that got me worried was I had a Pap smear last year. I didn’t see the speculum but my doctor had told me that it was the smallest. No lube was used btw. We had 2 tries cause the first time genuinely felt like she was trying to push through a “wall” and I had her stop and we were able to “push” through the second time but it was sooo painful. I asked her how to reduce pain for next time and she basically said “have sex”. But then that made me so nervous because I’m like if the supposed smallest speculum couldn’t then how am I supposed to do that? So I guess it’s almost futile to ask here but like how would I know if it’s vaginismus or “normal” pain? Especially since I hadn’t had issues in the past (although they were very small ). Just a little worried because I’ve heard the phrase that Pap smears should not hurt (at least penetration part) but I’m like mine definitely did. To the point where the part where most people report the uncomfortable-ness (the snipping part) didn’t even register for me cause I just wanted her to be done and pull out the speculum. I did bleed after. Immediately after I guess I didn’t worry about a condition like this cause I felt like my doctor would have mentioned it? If anything when it failed the first time, she was very like “this is typical since you haven’t had intercourse”. Hopefully my memory serves me correctly but I think she said a version of this out loud/I generally got the impression that this was not something that flagged to her as abnormal