According to a survey conducted by researchers at University College London and NatCen Social Research, which involved seven thousand British women between 16 and 74 years of age, about 7.5% of them experience pain during sexual intercourse.
We talk about this issue with Dr. Elena Longhi, Head of the Center for Clinical Sexology at Humanitas.
“Every woman has her own vaginism and the causes can be many and depend on personal psychosexual factors, relationship or couple factors and biological factors,” explains the doctor.
Causes of the discomfort
“Sometimes the cause lies in the past, due to sexual abuse experiences or traumatic memories linked to first attempts at penetration. Or, as often happens, for the female to feel overruled by male sexuality and being subjected to the eroticism of the partner.
In these cases, vaginism is associated with specific individual characteristics concerning its relationship with the body and the management of emotions. There may be conflict with the male or difficulty in expressing one’s femininity, as well as educational factors that tend to guilt sexuality, fear of pain in first sexual intercourse and loss of virginity.
Each of these causes can act as a predisposing, precipitating and/or maintaining factor for sexual disorder.
It is also not unusual that a symptom of female discomfort reveals a dysfunction of the partner, such as orgasmic difficulties or disturbance of desire. This is one reason that protects the male partner from criticism and judgments or from andrological visits that are not always appreciated.
Another cause may be a so-called white marriage: a couple that has lived for years without sexual relations with penetration due to indifference and/or phobia towards intimacy”.
The importance of asking for help
“It is often the desire to have a child that drives these couples to seek help, and not the desire to live a complicit and joyful sex life.
The sexologist must look not only for the specific causes of sexual discomfort, but also for the couple’s motivation to overcome the situation.
However, pay attention to therapeutic successes: sometimes one partner, reassured by the possibility of an easier and more joyful sex life, is taken by the feeling that the partner may become too desirable by other suitors. Consequently, this may give signs of decreased desire or psychosomatic symptoms.
During the course of sexual therapy, individual fragility and doubts are also revealed, without criticism or judgment, precisely so that the couple’s journey can be easy and pleasant,” concludes Dr. Longhi.
