Struggling to accept my vaginismus diagnosis (24F) — grieving my sex life & my love life
I don’t even know how to start this. I’m 24 and I have vaginismus and I am nowhere close to okay with it.
Some days I can talk about it clinically, like it’s just a medical thing. Other days it wrecks me. I look at my body and I feel like it’s betrayed me. Like I’m not even fully a woman because I can’t do the one thing that feels like it should be basic. I know that’s not fair or true, but knowing that logically hasn’t stopped me from feeling it every single day. The insecurity is constant. I can’t masturbate with penetration, I can’t have PIV sex, and every time I try, my body just says no — it clenches up and there’s nothing I can do about it in that moment. It doesn’t matter how much I want it to be different. My body isn’t listening to me and that loss of control over my own body is one of the hardest parts of this.
I’m in active treatment right now — trigger point injections, compounded vaginal suppositories, at-home dilation with a wand — and it is not cheap. Between appointments, meds, and the equipment, the cost adds up fast, and I’m already stretched thin financially. I approved treatment because I have to, but there are nights I do the math and just feel sick about it.
But the money isn’t even the hardest part. It’s the grief. I’m grieving my sex life at 24. I’m grieving my love life too — the version of dating and intimacy I thought I’d have by now. I don’t know how to bring this up to someone I’m interested in. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to a place where sex feels normal instead of like a medical project I’m managing. Nobody talks about how lonely this is. I don’t really have an ask here. I just needed to put it somewhere. If anyone else is deep in treatment and still struggling to accept it emotionally, even while doing everything “right” — I’d love to know I’m not the only one.