Scared

Until now, we had been working on the therapy suggested by the first doctor. He said to go through the various sizes of tampons, then do one finger, then do two. Except I would scream in pain when my husband would try to  insert two of his fingers into me. Finally he managed to do it but this idea of being able to move them in and out of me is completely impossible. As well barbecue me over a bunch of burning coals.

So my husband talked to the therapist (I was not really in a position to be talking; I was too busy being miserable) and he said "The level of pain you're talking about requires professional attention. You wife should be examined by a physical therapist or ob/gyn who is expert in sexual pain. Let me know if you need help finding someone."

So now I'm scared. Because now I have to actually call up a bunch of doctors who specialize in sexual pain and say, "Hey, guess what. I'm a freak. I can't consummate my marriage because just having my husband insert two fingers into me is a struggle which makes me scream. Now let me take off my panties in your office while you insert your gloved fingers inside me and make me scream as well and then perhaps laugh at me for being such an idiot."

Now yes, doctors are supposed to be compassionate so it's not likely that that would really happen. But when I went to my obgyn, the sense I got was that the idea of people just not being able to consummate their marriage at all was foreign to her. Then she told the other obgyn in her practice, who was my primary one, and I felt like my secret had been violated because the whole reason I had gone to her partner and not my regular physician in the first place was because I hadn't wanted the primary one to know and judge me. So I definitely don't want to go to either of those women for treatment.

Aside from the issue of finding someone, I'm going to have to miss work in order to do these appointments, which are probably going to be extremely humiliating and involve me being naked where it matters most and potentially inserting different size dilators inside myself. Plus I have no idea what this costs and if I have the money to pay for it, because health insurance probably won't pay for it. So I have no idea how I will pay for this. And it's not like I can ask family members for help potentially because I don't want them to know anything about this.

I also grew up in a time where therapy of any kind was frowned upon and looked down upon. The idea being, "Oh, you're crazy, that's why you need therapy." I remember my parents boasting when I grew up, "All our friends had to go to marriage therapy, but we never had to." It's like a mark of pride never to need to go to therapy. And here I am, 24 years old, and I'm not only going to have to go to therapy but I have to go to therapy where I'm naked and bare and in a completely vulnerable and compromising position which is nothing like what or who I am in real life where I'm actually a very accomplished professional.

So I'm scared. And I've been pushing off making the phone call because of how I'm dreading everything to follow and worrying that the woman I see will laugh at me or talk about me behind my back to all her friends - oh, that nebach case I had with a woman who couldn't even be intimate with her husband! Hashem yerachem. And I don't want to be a pity case.

But I have to make the phone call because we can't live like this. On the positive side of things, my amazing husband insists on coming with me to the doctor so maybe that means things will go better.

I hate crying in front of people and I just know I am going to dissolve into tears in front of this woman when I go see her because this is just way too much to handle. I hate feeling weak and yet I have no choice. I feel like what is anything I have done worth when in the end I still need to walk into an office and take off my panties and be felt up by a doctor so she can officially diagnose me and then tell me about exercises I need to do to calm down my vaginal muscles so that I can finally- finally- one day, preferably before Mashiach comes- make love to my husband.

I just hate being in a position which makes me so dependent on the mercy of others.