Frustrated to tears

I had a horrible session with my counselor today. I’m not even really sure what happened. It’s like there’s a disconnect between my mind and my mouth, and I have trouble forming thoughts and communicating them verbally. I’m always pretty bad with that, but today was just awful. It was like my mind was just completely blanked out and I had absolutely no other answers to her questions but “I don’t know.” I eventually got so frustrated with myself (and a little with her for her barrage of questions) that I just burst into tears.

My counselor seems to think that my vaginismus is somehow connected to my emotions. My vagina is physically closed-off because I am emotionally closed-off. This could explain why I have so much trouble in relationships. The only relationship I am capable of developing is a physical one, and since I am technically physically unable to develop that type of relationship at the moment… I am confusing even myself. But yes, basically that is why I am still single. Not only because I have trouble letting men “in” physically, but also emotionally. So due to this little problem, not only are we working on having me letting go of my mental block, but we’re also working on opening myself up emotionally. Which is extremely difficult for me. I buckle under pressure. Especially when people are asking me questions I don’t know the answers to. “How do you see yourself ideally?” “What do you need to happen for you to let your guard down?” “What do you think you have to offer in a relationship besides sex?” “What qualities make you you?” Well, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, and I don’t know. Frustration, frustration, frustration.

Besides that philosophical opening-up-to-people crap, we’re also working on letting my mind accept the pain so that I don’t freak out whenever something touches my vag. Basically, vaginal penetration is never going to be pain-free for me, so I have to deal with the pain. Apparently. That alone is extremely frustrating and makes me want to fucking scream. WHY is it always gonna be painful!? WHY do I have to accept that it hurts?! Isn’t the first rule of curing vaginismus to not allow yourself to feel any pain? This only reinforces the clamping down of the muscles right? So why in God’s name do I have to allow myself to hurt? What is the point of “curing” this, then?

So right about now, I am feeling extremely shitty about myself, and I just want to curl up under the covers and cry. Other women with vaginismus and VVS are able to deal with pain. They go to doctors and suck it up and deal with the physical therapy, they deal with exams, with dilators, the whole nine. They say, “oh it hurt quite a bit, but there’s some progress!” Me, no. I feel the Q-tip or the tampon applicator touching my tender parts and I cringe and I stop and occasionally burst into tears. I don’t have the strength that these other women have. I don’t have what it takes to cure this. So it seems really cruel that God (if he in fact exists) gave me this affliction.

I swear, I’ve been feeling really positive for the past few weeks about all this. I even changed my blog layout to reflect my new positive attitude that I’m supposed to be embracing. I’m not sure what happened today, but all that positivity has been thrown out the window. Maybe it’ll be back tomorrow.

New post. Not-so-new attitude.

It’s about time for a new post, huh? Thanks to my new online friend, who shall remain anonymous, for motivating me to post again. I think my lack of motivation to post is reflected in the fact that I have been severely lacking motivation to move forward in my treatment. I guess I feel this way because technically, I haven’t been moving forward at all. Through no fault of my own, I might add. The damn VVS combined with a severe penetration phobia that’s got a crazy hold on me is making it extremely difficult for me to move forward at all.

Going off on a tangent here…

If I hear one more time “my husband and I have never been able to have sex”, I think I’m going to scream. Does this… affliction, for lack of a better word… not affect anyone else but married women?! Am I the only vaginismus sufferer who’s single, and completely unattached? Can websites like vaginismus.com please acknowledge that there are sufferers who don’t have a partner? I feel like many of the things I’ve read on this issue mention how crucial partner involvement is in order to successfully cure this condition. Gee thanks, so because I don’t have a partner to help me along in this, I’ll never be cured. It seems that even in my small community of sufferers who feel so isolated from the rest of normal society, I feel even more isolated for being utterly alone in this. And yes, I know that there are single women who suffer from vaginismus too, but honestly, I feel like it’s a tiny, tiny percentage. I just find it kind of bizarre that there are so many women who aren’t able to have sex who have gotten married. I hope no one takes this the wrong way; I realize that there are people who choose to wait until marriage and all that, it’s just not very common in the society I belong to. I also realize that sex isn’t the most important, nor is it the only part of a relationship, but from my experience, sex is normally introduced very early on in the dating world. Most women my age, including all of my friends, are having sex within a couple of months, if not weeks, of dating someone new. I’ve never come across a dating situation where a guy wasn’t trying to get in my pants within the first few weeks of dating. I just can’t imagine having to tell a guy that I can’t do it just yet, and having him stick around. With all this in mind, I just find it kind of odd that it seems that so many of my fellow sufferers are in unconsummated marriages, when I don’t know of a single guy who would marry a girl he’s never had sex with.

Just today, I was having dinner with one of my close friends who’s familiar with my problem. We were talking about my dating life (or lack thereof) and she suggested that she set me up with one of her boyfriend’s friends. As I was starting to think, Yeah, why not? she said, “Ehh, he probably wouldn’t be OK with your situation though.” Right. Because he’s a normal 20-something year old guy with a healthy sex drive, so why would he want to date some girl he can’t put his penis in? She did add that “he’s kind of a jerk” but what 20-something year old isn’t? Regardless, a nice guy is still going to want to have sex.

But whatever. Enough with my negativity. I have griped on and on about this being-single-and-broken crap, and that wasn’t the point of my post. I forget what the original intent of this post was, but I’ll have to leave that for another time because right now I am tired and my sinus headache is returning.