A woman who wanted to wait until after she got
married to lose her virginity found out she had a painful condition that made
sex impossible.
Stephanie Muller, 23, grew up in a Christian household and wanted
to save sex for her wedding night because she didn’t want to have sex with
anyone that ‘wasn’t [her] husband’.
She met her husband Andrew, 31, in 2013 at their local church in
New York, but the pair didn’t start dating until 2015. Two years into their
relationship, in May 2017, they got married and planned to have sex on their
honeymoon.
However, when they tried, penetration was too difficult and
Stephanie got a yeast infection that made her feel very uncomfortable. The
prescribed medications didn’t work and the infection lasted three months.
Initially, she put her painful experience down to the yeast
infection and it wasn’t until she had her first pelvic exam she started to get
worried, as the pain was so severe that she shook, screamed and cried.
She wasn’t prepared to give up though, and when she recovered from
the infection she thought she would be able to have sex with her husband. This
wasn’t the case, and she eventually told a gynaecologist about her problems in
January 2018.
The 23-year-old said:
It wasn’t until January 2018 that I voiced my concerns to my gynaecologist
that she told me about vaginismus.
She told me about Women’s Therapy Centre, which is a treatment
clinic on Long Island that cures vaginismus and told me that if I wasn’t able
to go there, I could try to take Vicodin in order to have sex with my husband.
It felt like a pretty insensitive suggestion to just throw it out
there, and I just remember crying the entire rest of the day.
Refusing to believe Vicodin – a medicine used to relieve moderate
to severe pain – was the solution, the social worker decided to do some
research on vaginismus and the ways it can be treated. It was then she
discovered the use of pelvic floor therapy and bought a dilator set.
However, the 23-year-old said she ‘personally didn’t find them
helpful’, saying her condition was only cured when she visited Women’s Therapy
Centre in Plainview, New York.
Stephanie and Andrew went to their first consultation appointment
in January 2019 and began treatment in March, with Stephanie saying she was
healed and finished with treatment in May.
Ever since her diagnosis, the social worker has felt ashamed she
wasn’t able to have sex with her husband, saying their lack of intimacy made
her feel like she was living with a roommate.
She explained:
My husband and I have talked about how vaginismus really
desexualised our relationship; it was almost like living with a roommate. We
would even be careful about other physical things because neither of us wanted
to suggest trying to have sex, be disappointed, and the night ending in tears.
Around September 2018 we had a very honest conversation about the
physical part of our relationship and how it was affecting us. We then made a
decision to not give vaginismus so much power over us that we would hold us
back from being playful, affectionate and physical.
The social worker says this has helped the couple begin to
‘emotionally, mentally and relationally heal’, as speaking about her condition
with Andrew helps lessen the weight on her shoulders.
Stephanie continued:
Having vaginismus is a heavy weight, and what largely makes it so
difficult is the isolation and shame that comes with it.
I felt really embarrassed, broken, and like I couldn’t talk about
it with anyone. Andrew and I felt like we lost this really big thing and we had
to grieve it all alone.
She says Andrew has been ‘incredibly supportive’ throughout,
reassuring her he loves her and he isn’t going anywhere, even if the vaginismus
never heals. ‘He also drove me and was there with me for every appointment,
even though he didn’t have to,’ she said.
Stephanie has since made it her mission to speak out about the
condition to help other women going through a similar ordeal, as there is
currently a ‘massive lack of awareness about vaginismus’, and ‘where there is
lack of knowledge, there is fear’.
She now hopes to undertake public speaking engagements about
vaginismus to reduce the stigma surrounding the condition by talking about it
freely.
We wish Stephanie all the best with her journey.
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