When penetration causes pain: ‘I was holding back tears’
Vaginismus, an under-studied sexual dysfunction, involves involuntary spasms of pelvic muscles that can be due to physical but also psychological causes
When Mariángeles Montero, 33, wanted to have sex for the first time at the age of 20, she found that she couldn’t. Not because she didn’t want to, but because when she was with her boyfriend, she experienced “an intolerable pain” in her vagina. Mar Simón, 25, went through something similar when she was 19, but thought it was normal because her friends had told her that “it always hurt a little” at the beginning. In contrast, Natalia, 25, recalls hitting “a wall” when she had sexual relations with her first partner.
