Virgin wives
By LEE TSE LINGA number of married women shun intimacy because they suffer from a medical condition. StarTwo looks at the problem of virgin wives.
WARNING: The word ‘sex’ and lots of other words (some of them quite descriptive) pertaining to sex appear in this article. If you're an ostrich, NOW is the time to avert your eyes, turn the page or otherwise bury your head in the sand.
I WAS chatting to an aunt* the other day, and several things she said stuck in my head. The first was that she had been mistaken about a lot of things all her life, most of them sexual.
That struck me as slightly tragic, because it was a long time to labour under any sort of misapprehension (let alone several), especially misapprehensions so pivotal to one’s happiness.
The other thing was that she didn’t want to go into very much detail, leaving me to employ a lot of guesswork. Apparently, it wasn’t “the right time” in my life to hear about it. She considered the issue sordid and completely embarrassing.
To some extent I did too, because who in their right mind wants to be reminded that Auntie and Uncle once did/still do the liedown lambada?
But it made me wonder: when was the right time? Just before I got married? When I was happily married?
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JUST MARRIED...being better informed can make a difference to women who suffer from painful intercourse. |
In my case, it probably wouldn’t have made a huge difference. I had been fortunate enough to have a house full of books, access to libraries, a solid science education and all the issues of Cosmopolitan I could read before I turned blue. On top of that, I spent three and a half years in London, getting an education plus.
Sex was everywhere: on TV, on university notice boards (advising me on the wisdom of safe sex and regular screening, the dangers of chlamydia, emergency contraception and free health services), in my lecture theatres, in my face. All healthily out in the open, and not skulking behind red faces and euphemisms.
Furthermore, I was lucky enough to grow up among people who allowed me to question and encouraged me to find answers. So even if my parents were reluctant to dole out the risqué information, I got it all the same.
(More than I needed probably, thanks to the Karma Sutra, Sir Richard Burton’s classic and massively biased translation, and that other wonderful tome The Sex Book by Suzi Godson and Mel Agace – described by some as The Joy of Sex for the 21st century. MPH brings in The Sex Book at RM74.90, but not in large numbers so you will probably have to order it. Any decent bookstore will have some version of Burton’s Karma Sutra. Fantastic reads, both of them.)
However, maybe a sound sexual education would have made a difference for the many women who silently suffer from painful intercourse: the ones who wonder what is so great about sex when it hurts every time, and end up treating it as a wifely duty and additional chore.
Or the women who wonder why they can’t conceive, a situation worsened by the waspish sting of a disapproving mother-in-law’s tongue. Imagine the surprise of some when a visit to the gynaecologist reveals some of these sufferers are in fact virgins.
Excuse me? But they’re married. Surely they’re having sex. Penetrative sex.
Enter vaginismus, the condition that ironically prevents anything from entering the vagina.
Vaginismus occurs when the muscles in the lower third of the vagina contract as a reflex action to pain, or even the fear of pain. You can think of it as a phobia of penetration, especially painful penetration.
The reflex protects the vaginal canal from injury (lacerations and so on) by preventing penile entry.
The reaction to that memory and threat of pain is powerful enough for the spasm to persist even when pain abates or is absent.
The mechanism is so effective that it is not impossible for a couple to have an unconsummated marriage, period.
Treatment in the majority of cases is simple, non-surgical and effective: psychosexual counselling.
Which is a big, scary term for “having systematic, objective discussions with your gynaecologist about how to sort this out”.
Vaginismus is just one of the many conditions that can turn sexual intercourse into a nightmare for many women, souring a very real and rewarding aspect of their relationships.
And not enough people know about it, because nobody will talk about it. Mothers, a quick lowdown on your daughter’s wedding night isn’t enough.
If you think you can’t bring yourself to have that conversation, then point them in the direction of reliable information like the BBC’s Women’s Health web pages at http://www. bbc.co.uk/health/womens_health.
Half the problems out there probably stem from the fact that boys aren’t getting taught what they should either, so point them towards http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/mens_health too.
Teens would be a good group to start with. They are the ones most likely to experiment, the ones most susceptible to physical and emotional scarring, and the ones who have the most to lose when experiments blow up in their faces.
They are also the ones “most lied to” in those ridiculous attempts at sexual education. You know, where they separate the girls from the boys, and an embarrassed (female) religious teacher and cavalier-esque (male) teacher delivers a straightforward anatomy lesson.
People are going to have sex whether you talk about it or not, whether you advocate it or not, whether you ban the sale of condoms or not. People are going to have sex, period. It is instinctive. If it weren’t, we all wouldn’t be here today, because who on earth was around to teach our troglodyte forefathers where to put what?
It is my personal belief that if everyone got “some” more often, we wouldn’t be dropping quite as many bombs on other people. To put it another way, if everyone had at least one orgasm a day, the world would be a much better place.
But that’s just me. And this isn’t an ethical or moral debate about wanton fornication versus marital sex.
It is a question of educating people about the facts of life – not fairy tales about ornithology and entomology – at a time when it will actually do them some good. It is about equipping them with the knowledge to make informed choices that will save them a world of pain.
*The exact relationship has been altered because I don’t want to get killed by the relevant relative. Suffice to say she isn’t an actual aunt of mine.
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