23/06/2026
I genuinely thought vaginismus was something that happened to other people.
You hear the word and assume there’s a reason. A story. A traumatic event you can point to and say, “That’s why.”
But I didn’t have one.
I was 24 when I realised something wasn’t right.
I’d spent years treating s*x like this thing that belonged in the future. Something to avoid, not understand. Nobody really talked about it at home. Nobody explained how our bodies worked. Nobody mentioned that sometimes bodies respond in ways we don’t expect.
Then one day I tried to have s*x, and my body said no.
Not because I didn’t want to.
Not because I wasn’t ready.
Not because I was with the wrong person.
It just wouldn’t let me.
For months, I blamed myself. I thought I needed to try harder. Relax more. Stop overthinking. I kept looking for what I’d done wrong because surely there had to be something.
Finding out it was vaginismus was the first time I considered another possibility: maybe my body wasn’t working against me.
Maybe it was trying to protect me.
That was a difficult thing to accept because protect me from what? Nothing bad had happened. But that’s the thing about protective responses. They don’t always make logical sense. Sometimes your nervous system learns to brace long before you’re aware it’s doing it.
The biggest shift in my recovery happened when I stopped seeing my body as the enemy.
My pelvic floor wasn’t failing me. It wasn’t broken. It had learned a response that it believed was keeping me safe.
And if it could learn that response, it could learn something new.
I still wish we’d spend less time teaching people to protect their virginity and more time teaching them about their bodies. Maybe I would’ve recognised the signs sooner. Maybe I would’ve asked for help sooner.
What I know now is that I didn’t cause this. And I don’t have to blame myself for it.
My body was trying to protect me.
Now we’re learning that it doesn’t have to anymore.
