There are many reasons why someone might have pain with sex including pelvic floor tightness. Here is one strategy that I have personally utilized to decrease pelvic floor tightness.
Physical Therapy Strategy to Decrease Pain with sex
I want to start this off by telling you what a good Catholic girl I am, that I’m a professional, that I care about how you see me so much that I feel the need to preface the next vulnerable and personal lines of this blog post with accolades & personal stories of how nice I am in real life.
I want to apologize in advance for any discomfort I may cause my mother or boyfriend because what I’m about to say is extremely personal and may be outside the realm of what you’re supposed to say out in public (ie the Internet). I also feel like I should post a public apology to the Pope for having pre-marital sex and not planning to stop even though the church tells me it’s wrong.
I want to do all those things, but I’m not going to. Because my hope in this, is that my mother is extremely proud that she raised a brave, kind woman who is willing to sacrifice her comfort & risk her “professional” self-constructed image to help women who are too scared to bring this up to their friends, family or healthcare professionals. The Catholic guilt card, well I’m still working through that — but I believe we can let the first person who is sin free throw the first stone. Anyone? I didn’t think so.
You see, I wasn’t going to write this blog post. No way, Jose. I was drawing my proverbial line in the sand at sex. The girl who prides herself on letting her friends tell her ANYTHING because she isn’t one of those “TMI girls,” wasn’t going to put herself out there in the public, in this way.
And then my phone rang yesterday.
I answered while driving home from work and on the other end was a brilliant old friend who I hadn’t talked to in awhile. Between the catching up on work and house renovations and military life I casually mentioned, “oh & I started pelvic floor therapy because I have pelvic floor tightness and I was peeing my pants and did you know that it can be made worse by stress?! And beyond that, I learned this new trick on how to relax my pelvic floor and sex is WAY MORE FUN now that it doesn’t feel uncomfortable and like I’m being stabbed. WHO KNEW THIS WAS A THING!!?”
Silence.
Not the awkward kind, the kind where someone is processing the information they heard and are wondering if they want to be vulnerable with you. Wondering if you’re trust worthy enough to share the “me too,” moment.
She said, “I am so glad you shared that with me. I actually went to a doctor to maybe see if I could do that too but then we moved and well I think it’s getting worse and I don’t know what to do because sex isn’t awful but it isn’t really fun either.”
In the next moment, I think you could’ve heard my heart shatter. You don’t know your friends are living through this, until you do. In that moment, this article HAD to be written.
Sex doesn’t have to be painful or uncomfortable. You don’t have to avoid positions because “you just can’t do them,” and wonder why there must be something broken within your body that isn’t allowing you to relax and enjoy something that is so primitive and intimate as sex.
You see, sex requires muscles. Those muscles can get tight or weak or spasm or believe that something that once was traumatic (sexual assault) will always result in the same trauma.
Your body remembers and those muscles can spasm and tighten up when you’re in a position that has previously caused you pain or “discomfort.” And if you don’t consciously change this pattern, it may continue indefinitely.
In my case (here’s where things get personal), I couldn’t do that position when your partner is lying down on their back and you’re on top sitting up with your legs in a w sit position.
*side note: I’m in a heterosexual relationship so my partner is male, if you’re in a homosexual relationship the specific position may look different, but honor that experience. Especially since both men and women experience pelvic floor tightness.
Now that we know my dirty little bedroom secret, we can get even more specific. I would always try that position, but it felt like someone was stabbing me in the ovaries with a pitch fork or dull hammer. I couldn’t tolerate it for more than 1-3 tries. I wouldn’t have ever said it was “pain,” though. I would have said it was just “not going to continue,” or that I “didn’t want to try that position,” or “not that position, not today.”
Not until I was speaking about it with my pelvic health therapist, did she remind me that it was “pain,” my brain was just interpreting it differently than a break or sprain or strain to a leg muscle/bone.
She encouraged me to use my “pelvic floor relaxing,” technique DURING SEX to see if it helped. She reminded me that I needed to stop the pain cycle by consciously choosing to relax during the movement pattern (which happened to be sexual intercourse).
Batman (my boyfriend) was more than thrilled to learn we had “sex homework,” that week. I had to “read him in,” on what I was going to do because I knew I’d have to concentrate and that would mean that it was more of an experiment while I was in that position than looking like I was enjoying myself. Cue that face that you make when you’re trying to relax but it looks like what you’re doing is really hard.
So we were both on board. During the moments of that specific position (I’m sure it has a name but I can never remember them) I felt the discomfort immediately.
I wanted to stop, then I reminded myself to be open to trying it. “Maybe it will work,” I remember saying in my mind. I concentrated on my pelvic floor or really just my vagina and did a kegal or contraction (a quick one) and then imagined letting go of my pelvic floor by pushing it away from me as if it was an elevator going down. I did this multiple times, contraction let the elevator that is my pelvic floor go down three floors, again, and again, and again. At least 5-10 times while Batman was doing his thing (gently). My eyes were closed, concentrating on my job, breathing in and out, like I was doing bicep curls in my guest bedroom.
Then I relaxed, said ok let’s try it for real this time. It worked. It wasn’t painful and it automatically went to FUN. It was like my pelvis wasn’t locked up anymore. I was able to actually move it instead of trying so hard to be in rhythm with the lower half of my body not doing what I wanted. Batman was thrilled. It was one of the most fun “sack sessions,” we’ve had in a while.
It was a total success.
& when sex is fun, your relationship is more fun. In my personal opinion being intimate is so important — having fun in a safe yet rewarding (for both parties) experience is vital to the health of a romantic relationship.
Intimacy involves a lot of trust and that trust is built on feeling safe. If you’ve had trauma before whether it was sexually related or not it can impact how your muscles function. While I encourage everyone to work with a pelvic health therapist, even if before your first appointment you want to vomit in your mouth like I did — I also think therapy/counseling are extremely healthy additions to address the mental components of trauma and intimacy. I’m doing both in conjunction with each other and it’s been one of my best decisions yet.
While this blog post is to educate you on the potentials of pelvic health therapy and to remind you that you don’t have to continue to live with pelvic floor dysfunction, it isn’t really a “how to” post. If you’d like to delve in more with the exercises I’m currently doing to help with pelvic floor tightness click here (coming soon).
To find your own pelvic floor therapist click here.
