I would like to preface this by apologizing for how extremely personal I’ve gone with this post. I should also provide a trigger warning, that this post gets graphic and contains details surrounding a sexual assault. A little explanation from my previous piece may also be helpful. I wrote about the chronic, undiagnosable vaginal pain I have had for seven years, this is the second part of that piece.
Before I can sleep with a man, I have to explain all of the complicated issues about my vagina. It’s only fair that they know the mess they are getting into, Both literally and figuratively. A man I’m going to have sex with deserves to know that it’s a possibility for me to start crying in the middle of it because the pain is too much to handle. This conversation is always uncomfortable. My issues are very difficult to explain, just ask the dozens of doctors who have tried. One question I get often is “Can I catch it?” Which granted is a fair question. But watching the fear in their eyes as if I’m some gross enigma always cuts deep.
This conversation puts me in an incredibly vulnerable position. If you’re not in a relationship, and you’re trying to engage in a less intimate sexual encounter you normally don’t have to share something so deeply painful and personal. But that’s not my reality. It has also forced me to learn how to be extremely vocal about my sexual history, partners, likes, and dislikes, etc. before engaging in sexual activity with a partner. It makes me do all that adult shit before having adult relations. I was 20 years old when a man I had been sleeping with consensually used my medical issues against me to make me believe it was my fault that he sexually assaulted me.
I was dating a man named Michael that was 27 and was way more interested in me than I was in him. Looking back, this should have been the first red flag, but at the time it made me feel desirable. My messed up vagina makes me feel less feminine and I hadn’t felt desirable in a very long time (my inner feminist is screaming at me for that, but it’s the truth). I’d always been the one pursuing the person I was interested and this was a nice change.
On our first date he was very physical. He held my hand. He grabbed my waste. He kissed me deeply in the middle of the street. I’m not typically one for so much physical affection right away, and it made me uncomfortable. But again I ignored it because I so desperately needed to feel wanted.
Everything moved very quickly from there, we started sleeping together on our third date, but before anything happened I sat him down for the uncomfortable talk. I told him about my issues, the pain, my tendency for urinary tract infections, and the things that were a no go for me. Top on the list was anal sex. He told me he was fine with all of that and we began being intimate.
The second red flag I should have seen came a few weeks later. We weren’t exclusive and he saw that I had been talking to someone else on Tinder. He got irrationally angry with me. I tried to explain to him that he and I were not exclusive and it while he may not be entirely happy about it, he had not real reason to be angry with me. I was sure I was right, but somehow by the end of the conversation I wound up apologizing. He convinced me that I was being cruel and inconsiderate. I also wasn’t ready to be exclusive with him yet, but by they end of that night I was.
I decided to try to be positive about the whole thing. Maybe this would be a good thing. He liked me and it felt nice to be wanted. I would give it a shot. The morning I decided this I was heading to his apartment. I figured I would do something nice to Michael and pick him up breakfast to make up for the fight I had allegedly caused. He was grateful and it seemed like everything was fine. We were watching Breaking Bad, and the inevitable shift occurred that happens when two people who are together are laying in bed watching Netflix. We began to have sex.
It was fine at first, even borderline good. Or rather it was as good as it can be for someone who has constant vaginal pain. But then he decided he was going to have anal sex with me. He tried to enter me in a place where I had explicitly said he didn’t belong. I told him no. I told him to stop, but he kept trying to enter me there. I had push him twice to get him to stop trying to force himself inside of me. After he finally stopped trying to have anal sex with me, he pretended like everything was fine and tried to re-enter my vagina.
I was clearly upset. I didn’t want to have any kind of sex with this man. I had never had to use physical force with anyone, let alone in a situation as intimate and vulnerable as sex. I was scared, confused, and upset and he just tried to continue. I needed him to stop but he didn’t. Finally I yelled that he needed to stop because I was going to get a urinary tract infection (which I did) from the transfer of bacteria. Not because he had just violated my trust and my body, but because I was going to get sick. It didn’t make sense, but in that moment nothing made sense. I could not even begin to grasp what had just happened.
He finally exited my body, but he didn’t get off of me. Instead he yelled at me. He told me how it was my fault. My vagina was fucked up and he shouldn’t be punished for that.I was being crazy and irrational. I gave him mixed signals. My body was too broken for him to really understand that my telling him to stop meant he should really stop.
I absolutely love the emotion and how you described the moments in just enough detail nothing too much to discomfort the reader and nothing too little that would leave the reader clueless.
“I was dating a man named Michael that was 27 and was way more interested in me than I was in him. Looking back, this should have been the first red flag, but at the time it made me feel desirable. My messed up vagina makes me feel less feminine and I hadn’t felt desirable in a very long time (my inner feminist is screaming at me for that, but it’s the truth). I’d always been the one pursuing the person I was interested and this was a nice change.”
However this paragraph above seems just a little awkward and confusing to me because although you say “looking back” which shows a pause and rewind I was confused because going into the introduction of Michael I assumed this was the person who caused you all the vaginal pain to begin with. As you continue you actually already have had that pain so I hope I am clear when I am explaining and saying that I just wish you explained what happened to you from the very beginning on when and how the pain started. Then you could transition into the difficulties of being intimate with someone and the additional pain it has caused you. I hope this helps you moving forward with this amazing piece, I look forward to reading more.
Hi there,
This is overall a really powerful piece. As I read your work, I felt really drawn in, which points toward your ability to absorb a reader and invoke emotions in your audience. The beginning paragraphs about your health disclosure make the narrator (you, of course) likable and funny, and the way you phrased the situation, I can almost picture it in my mind. I also really appreciated how understanding you are when you get odd questions; no one wants to read a long, self-pitying complaint, but you avoid taking that tone both here and throughout the entire piece. Your matter-of-fact approach is one of the piece’s biggest strengths.
I did have a few suggestions for the following paragraph, the one beginning with “The second red flag.” I understand why it’s integral to the piece – it shows that Michael was awful from the beginning – although the transition seems a little choppy. Maybe try joining it to the previous paragraph, like “we began being intimate, but the bliss of our relationship didn’t last long.” The flow of the narrative is slightly disrupted otherwise.
Also, in the second-to-last paragraph, “I didn’t want to have any kind of sex with this man” should be changed to “I no longer wanted to have any kind of sex with this man.” It’s just a minor clarification, though, and the overall message is very clear and poignant.
I’ve said this to you before, but I think it’s incredibly brave of you to be writing such a personal story, especially one about such a critical subject matter. Excellent work, and I can’t commend you enough for being strong enough to share this important story.
I agree with both comments above. I think this piece is extremely brave and honest and I greatly appreciate your vulnerability. However, I do think there is a slight confusion about how the pain occurred originally. That part is unclear. I also think it would be helpful to tie your story to a bigger picture so the reader feels there is a greater reason to reading this, because some may feel a lack of connection to your circumstances.