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Dear Aunt Vadge,
I’m freaked out because I keep getting tiny tears near my clitoris – just below it, between the clitoris and a little hole maybe a centimetre away. (Are those two tiny holes beneath the clitoris normal? I couldn’t find a name for them.) The tear is very small, barely visible, but it stings to stretch or if I sit oddly.
The way I got it: I was checking myself, making sure everything had healed from last time, and I stretched the skin beneath the clitoris and – boom, the smallest tear. I kept poking at it and I think it got worse.
They heal in 3–6 days. I don’t masturbate and I’m not sexually active; I just wash with warm water in the shower. My discharge is normal, no odour. Why does this keep happening? Do I have an infection?
Sincerely,
Freaking Out
USA
Dear Freaking Out,
First, you are not gross, you don’t have an infection (no odour, normal discharge), and nothing is wrong with you – and I think you’ve actually told me the cause yourself without realising. Read back your own words: you stretched the skin and a tear appeared, then you kept poking at it and it got worse.
That’s the whole mystery solved. The skin there is some of the thinnest, most delicate tissue on your whole body. And stretching and prodding it creates micro-tears, then checking and re-poking reopens them before they can heal. It’s a loop, and you’re (very understandably, out of worry) keeping it going.
Quick anatomy, since you asked: the opening just below your clitoris is your urethra (where you wee from), the two tiny holes either side of it are your Skene’s gland ducts, completely normal and everyone has them, and the soft area all of this sits in is the vestibule, which is where your little tears are happening.
Have a look against the diagram – you might find you’ve been worrying about completely normal anatomy.
So what to do. The main thing is to stop the stretch-and-poke check: let it fully heal, hands off, and if you want to look, use a mirror rather than stretching the skin.
Then do an irritant inventory – if they still appear once you’ve stopped poking, the next suspects are products touching the area: soaps and washes, laundry detergent on your underwear, and scented toilet paper, so strip back to plain-water washing and fragrance-free everything.
If, after you’ve really left it alone and removed irritants, you’re still getting recurrent splits in the same spot, that’s worth a check with a gynaecologist, because recurrent vestibule fissures can occasionally point to a skin condition or low oestrogen, which they’d need to examine to sort out (not something we assess at My Vagina).
But I think you’ll find leaving it be does the trick. Being curious about your own body is a good thing – just be gentle with it.
For soothing and healing minor cuts and tears, here’s how to deal with cuts and tears from fingering and rough sex.
Best,
Aunt Vadge
This is general information, not a substitute for personalised medical advice.
