Painful Sex Is More Common Than You Think. Is There a Fix?
Several new products are on the market. Whether they solve the underlying problem is an open question.
For the first decade of Emily Sauer’s sex life, pain felt like an unavoidable aspect of the pursuit of pleasure. During certain positions, she’d be struck with a deep pelvic pain, one that made it more difficult to get excited about sexual experimentation or truly let herself relax and get into the moment.
Sauer’s experience with sexual pain extended beyond her pelvis. “When I was having sex and it was painful, it wasn’t just a physical experience—it was also an emotional one,” she says. “I felt like I wasn’t just disappointing to myself, but also to my partner.” And because her pain intensified during periods of stress, that feeling of disappointment made her problem worse, fueling a cycle in which her stress about her pain intensified her pain during sex.
Although Sauer repeatedly tried to broach the topic of her pain at her annual gynecologist appointment, the conversations never led to a satisfying resolution. “I was generally rushed out the door without any advice or suggestions that were helpful,” she says. It was this reaction from health professionals that led her to view her pain as a personal issue, “and not one that…
