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Hey Aunt Vadge,
I recently had sex with my boyfriend. It took a long time before he could finally enter me and I will admit I did not really enjoy it – but I saw how happy he was, and I hadn’t expected my first time to feel amazing, so we wanted to try again the next day.
But it didn’t work. No matter how much I relaxed or how slow and careful he was, he couldn’t enter me – as if I was too tight, as if there was a spot he just couldn’t pass. I was in a lot of pain, so we stopped.
I got really frustrated and a bit scared. Is something wrong with me? Why did it work the first time but hurt so much the second?
Yours truly,
Confused and Frustrated
Germany
Dear Confused and Frustrated,
Nothing is wrong with you – what you’re describing is one of the most common things in the world, and it has a clear explanation. The first time, you got through it, but it took a long, effortful while, you didn’t enjoy it, and there was some discomfort.
Your body registered all of that. So the second time, without you deciding it, the pelvic-floor muscles around the vaginal entrance tightened up protectively, bracing against the pain they now half-expected – and that’s the “spot he couldn’t pass” and the “too tight” feeling.
It’s called vaginismus (or pelvic-floor guarding), it’s involuntary, it’s very common after a painful or joyless first experience, and crucially it’s not a structural problem and it’s very treatable.
The key thing to understand is that fighting it with more relaxing-in-the-moment and more careful pushing often doesn’t work, because the tightening isn’t something you can consciously switch off mid-attempt – it needs the pressure and the expectation of pain taken off it.
So the way forward is to stop trying to “make penetration happen” for now, which in itself lowers the bracing, and instead rebuild slowly and on your own terms: get properly, unhurriedly aroused (the tissue only softens and opens when you’re really turned on, and a rushed first time rarely gets there), use plenty of lubricant, and reintroduce penetration gradually – your own finger first, then gentle graded dilators – at a pace where there’s no pain at all, so your body relearns that this is safe.
If it doesn’t ease with that, a pelvic-floor physiotherapist is the gold standard and resolves this properly; it’s exactly what they do. You’re not broken, you’re not too small, and this is fixable – the first painful round simply taught your muscles to guard, and they can be taught back out of it.
Warmest regards,
Aunt Vadge
This is general information, not a substitute for personalised medical advice.
