Problems Less Talked About
So I blogroll-surfed my way into a previously-unknown-to-me realm of sex-and-relationship bloggers this morning, which is always fun because it's a perpetual refutation of "nothing new under the sun."
I found a new-to-me blog, The Ethical Slut (tagline "Once a slut now monogamous, engaged, and vaginally disabled.) There's a lot of cool, irreverent, and highly salacious postery on her blog, and what I really like about it is there's plenty of reality as well. And while this isn't what her blog is about at all she's dealing with vulvodynia -- basically the catch-all phrase for genital pain in women.
Vulvodynia is simply pain of the vulvar/vaginal area. It won't surprise anyone to know that while scientists have come up with a thousand pills for erectile dysfunction, women's health is a shockingly low priority in the medical world.
Thus, vulvodynia is just a catch-all phrase for "we don't know what the hell is wrong with your cooter." While some women have pain of the clitoris (ouch!) or deep, internal pain, I'm in the vulvar vestibulitis syndrome camp.
One of my middle-term partners developed vulvodynia and it definitely puts a kink in things. With her, like a lot of people, it just showed up one day -- we took a break to see if that would help, and then a longer one, and eventually just stopped trying altogether. We maintained a pretty active sex life centered on a lot of mutual and parallel masturbation. One of my favorite "positions" had me lying on my back and her either straddling and grinding her vulva against my cock or, more often, my upper thigh while we madly kissed and fondled each other and whispered deep fantasies into each other's ears. About once a month she'd get a strong urge for penetration that was almost always thwarted by her just bracing herself tensely and insisting "no I'm fine let's do it" that... didn't do much at all for *my* ability to move forward. At the time I thought it was "just" that she was in a cycle where tensing up because of pain the last time made the present time painful. Turns out it's way more complicated than that.
But at least I'd heard about vulvodynia before reading this post. What I *didn't* know about, that one of her commenters mentioned that there's a corresponding and equally unexplained phenomena in men called chronic pelvic pain syndrome. He's got it. He also mentions a site called Pelvic Pain Help which describes the feeling as a "headache in the pelvis" that maybe is caused by "overuse of the human instinct to protect the genitals, rectum, and contents of the pelvis from injury or pain by contracting the pelvic muscles." (The commenter, Nick at Halcyonic, who's also new to me, has it.)
At any rate, while my partner and I, like (it sounds like) Ethical Slut, and maybe like Nick, were able to find satisfying workarounds not everyone is so lucky.
At any rate, if you or your partner, male as well as female, has something like that going on it sounds like you're *really* not alone. Turns out it's something you could Google for more information about it, talk to your healthcare provider about it, and tell your partner about. (I'm guessing a *heck* of a lot of people of all genders don't know there's anyone they can talk to or that there's anything that can be done.)
Vulvodynia is simply pain of the vulvar/vaginal area. It won't surprise anyone to know that while scientists have come up with a thousand pills for erectile dysfunction, women's health is a shockingly low priority in the medical world. (Quoted from The Ethical Slut)
It may be a low priority here in the U.S., but there may be medications available in Europe that have not been marketed here. The reason I say this is that I know of one woman who lived in the U.K. who suffered from the same painful disorder. Her doctor recommended that she try an experimental drug and magically it did the trick. The drug may be widely used in Europe, but not approved by the FDA for the U.S. For example, the Mirena coil (an intrauterine contraceptive) had been marketed in Europe since 1990 but not approved in the US until 2000.
As for the pelvic pain syndrome, one of my partners occasionally experienced painful spasms during orgasm, but it was not a chronic condition. And it may not be a condition that applies only to men. Some women will experience severe cramping when an orgasm begins while they are asleep. The dream may be pleasurable but the waking up is painful.
[Good to know at least some people are taking it seriously. I think it's important to daylight and, especially, destigmatize all the *real* impediments to enjoyable sex so people won't feel so obliged to go around making excuses for why... nobody else should have it either. Thanks, Kochanie. --fl]
This wouldn't surprised me....
Although there are apparently 2-3 schools of thought about what causes vulvodynia:
-viral, like HPV
-nerve misinformation
-psychological
But really, there's still not a proven cause or cure.
[No. Or not yet anyway. I just think folks should give it a little more leeway, pay a little closer attention, not say "it's all in your head," and otherwise take it appropriately seriously. Thanks, ES. --fl]