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Hi Aunt Vadge,
I don’t know how to navigate fingering myself. I’d never inserted anything until very recently — I was too nervous, so I’d stick to the outside, and it worked. But I want to be able to have penetrative sex with my boyfriend, so I’m trying to work up to it by getting used to the feeling of my own fingers first.
The problem is I have no idea what to do. I insert a small portion of my finger, I’m not sure where to go, and it doesn’t feel good — it feels so tight, and the further I go the tighter it gets.
I use lube and try to be aroused enough beforehand, but it feels like I’m too nervous to be properly aroused. I thought I might have vaginismus, but I’m not sure. Any help?
Scaredy CatSan Francisco, USA
Dear Scaredy Cat,
Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of fingering! There’s no reason to think something’s ‘wrong’ — like vaginismus — just because your vagina feels tight.
A lot is going on when we first start entering our own bodies with fingers, objects and boyfriends, and it can be scary and frankly pretty weird, especially when you’re not turned on and you’re not even sure yet what penetration is supposed to feel like. (For the record, vaginismus is just the name for a vagina that’s tight and painful to put anything into, with causes from anxiety to pelvic-floor dysfunction, all treatable — but I don’t think that’s you.
You’ve done good sleuthing, you’ve just landed on the wrong answer.)
The thing that changes everything is what being turned on actually means, physically. When you’re aroused, your clitoral tissue swells with blood and your vagina gets wetter as blood flow increases, and everything feels different — including sensations that were boring or uncomfortable before. In your case, being properly turned on is almost certainly the missing link.
And the catch is that nerves switch it off: you’ve set yourself a goal (penetrative sex), you’ve been too nervous to even finger yourself before, and now you’re trying to ready yourself for a comparatively enormous penis you won’t be in control of.
That’s scary, not sexy — like training to climb Everest — and treating your own body as a problem to solve (“if only my vagina wasn’t so tight”) just piles on stress, which is fundamentally not hot.
So picture a tangled string of fairy lights in your pelvis. For those lights to stay on and get brighter — more turned on — you have to find the nearest wire to press through the vaginal wall, and everyone’s bundle is arranged differently, which is why what works for one person does nothing for another.
The crucial part: the lights have to be ON before you go looking for the wires. If they’re off, like when you’re nervous, fingering will just feel strange or sore or boring, and you’ll psyche yourself out thinking something’s wrong.
When you’re properly turned on, your clitoris — which is actually huge, with internal structures you can’t see — swells up just like an erect penis.
The lights are on when you’ve got what you might cheerfully call a lady boner, and without one you simply won’t feel much, because nervousness flips the wrong part of your nervous system on and shuts arousal down. So this has to be all about you for a bit — forget your boyfriend entirely.
A practical tip: where you are in your cycle makes a real difference. Around ovulation (track it with an app) you’re far more responsive and easy to turn on, so make a date with yourself then.
Do whatever self-pleasure has already worked for you first — but don’t tip over into orgasm — and only once the fairy lights are properly on, bring your fingers to the entrance.
Wet or lube them and, without going in, gently rub around the vaginal opening for a while; there are loads of nerve endings right there at the entrance and surprisingly few inside the canal, which is exactly why the vagina itself doesn’t feel like much and why the internal clitoris matters so much.
Another trick is to squeeze and release your pelvic-floor muscles about ten times to bring blood to the area and help your vagina ‘wake up’.
When it feels like a good moment, slowly slide one finger in and gently rotate it, feeling the walls.
The bottom wall isn’t very exciting, but the top wall is the other side of your clitoral structures, and with a lady boner on board it’ll feel completely different from before — keep your clitoral stimulation going the whole time, because the two together are what make it feel good (and remember that with your boyfriend too: penetration without the clitoris rarely works well). Try two fingers if you fancy.
Position matters as well — lying on your front rubbing against a pillow, or crouching and reaching from behind, can feel totally different, so experiment. Once your fingers feel familiar (or a bit boring), you can try something bigger: deeper near the cervix can feel fantastic, and something with more girth pushes more firmly on those clitoral structures.
If you don’t have a dildo, a household object can do, with rules — clean, no sharp edges, nothing breakable or small enough to get lost, and always something with a base or handle to hold onto, because the vagina does draw things in past a certain point.
Being properly turned on is the whole key to turning something scary into a lifetime of great sex — and you sound very close. Go forth and fiddle, and feel completely confident you’ll work it out.
Happy fiddling!
Love,
Aunt Vadge
This is general information, not a substitute for personalised medical advice.
