I’m Kelley, co-founder and CEO of Pelva. I am many things: an artist, a friend, a wife, a sister, a founder, an inventor, and a woman who lived with vaginismus and provoked vestibulodynia for over a decade. Pelva was built from my own experiences with vulvovaginal pain, and it’s easy to feel like that’s my entire identity. Honestly, it felt that way even before the company existed. I was constantly reminded that my body couldn’t do something that seems so natural to everyone else.
It’s been two years since we launched Pelva, and two years since I’ve been able to have pleasurable intercourse with my husband (always with our vaginal liner). Sometimes I feel strangely distant from the debilitating feelings I carried for so long. In a way, it is a great thing because it means I’m healing: physically, mentally, emotionally. But it’s also weird. I almost feel sad that those feelings are fading because I don’t want to forget how difficult it was. I want to remember so I never take this time of intimacy for granted and so I can still relate with those in that struggle.
With this, I decided to take a minute to process and share 10 things I either felt or experienced during that time. I decided to be pretty honest about it. Some things may not be popular feelings, but maybe someone out there will relate.
So here are the 10 real, messy feelings I had when sex (or any insertion) was impossible or extremely painful. I’ve also included the resources or mindset shifts that actually moved the needle for me (or at least helped). It’s important to note that everybody is different and what helps one may not help another. This is also not medical advice. Please see a healthcare practitioner to find what is right for you and your unique body!
1. I felt like my body was broken.
Reframe that helped: Your body is trying to protect you, not betray you.
Pain is an alarm system, not a defect. After years of associating touch or insertion with danger, my nervous system was doing exactly what it’s designed to do: tighten, protect, and say “NO.” Understanding the pain-fear-tension cycle (and that it is reversible) was the first crack of light.
→ Book that helped me with this concept: “The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain” by Alan Gordon
2. I felt zero sexual desire and a dead libido.
Of course I did! My body decided sex = threat. I even had moments of questioning my sexuality in general… Was I asexual? It was hard to make sense of it. What helped me was knowing that it wasn’t always this way (when I wasn’t trying to have intercourse) and reading and learning about sexual desire.
Beyond this, it was incredibly helpful to learn more about how desire works. Which leads me to one of the best books of all time – Come as You Are.
→ Must read: Come As You Are + the Workbook by Emily Nagoski. It teaches you that your libido isn’t broken, it’s context-dependent and you can rebuild the context.
3. I felt fear looking at my husband’s body and struggled to even touch him.
This is something that I haven’t really found many people talking about. But in the height of my vaginismus days, I struggled to touch my husband, even non-sexually. This is something that got worse with time. And honestly, it's something that makes me teary just thinking about it.
It’s a difficult one, because yes, we can explain why. Again, it comes back to protection and shame. I didn’t want to start something I couldn’t finish. I didn’t want to feel the shame of not being able to give him intimacy in the way I wanted (intercourse!) My husband was an incredible partner to have with vaginismus – incredibly kind, gentle, never pushed anything, and at the slightest look of pain would never continue. He was incredibly intuitive and could read me like a book. So for me, I think I just felt bad about starting sexual chemistry because I wanted to do more but knew it wasn’t possible.
But what’s hard about this one is how it affected him. Never being touched by the person you love. Never being shown that you are desirable... that is so painful. It was something that I had to grapple with and work on because I DO love him and I DO find him desirable.
This is where sex therapy really helped. If you struggle with this like I did, I highly recommend finding a sex therapist. I also found some exercises in the book, “Becoming Orgasmic” to be very helpful.
→ Book: "Becoming Orgasmic" by Julia Heiman & Joseph LoPiccolo (an oldie but an absolute goldie for rewiring sexual aversion and rebuilding comfortable touch step-by-step).
4. I felt like a guinea pig and taken advantage of by half-baked “solutions.”
Expensive creams, practitioners who clearly didn’t get it, being sold hope of quick recovery that (let’s be real) was anything but quick. I spent thousands of dollars feeling experimented on.
And also, to be clear, for most of my time with vaginismus, I lived in rural Indiana where the closest pelvic floor PT was hours away. I wish I had found credible books and resources way sooner from pelvic floor professionals that are truly the best of the best.
→ What I wish I’d read sooner: “Sex without Pain: A self-treatment guide to the sex life you deserve.” by Heather Jeffcoat, PT DPT.
5. I was terrified that if I ever conceived, my baby would be conceived out of pain and duty or that I wouldn’t be able to bear penetration at all.
The idea of “just grin and bear it” to get pregnant made me feel sick. I didn’t want my child’s origin story to be painful. Not sure why this consumed me, but it did. I think it might resonate with others so I’m just being honest about it.
→ Helpful interventions: Learning about at-home intracervical insemination (ICI) with devices like the Mosie Baby syringe or Frida Fertility’s new kit. These options can feel intimate and loving on your terms. And knowing they exist is helpful and eased my mind (even though I’m not trying to get pregnant now).
6. I was worried my husband regretted marrying me.
We finally had the hard conversation where I admitted this fear out loud. Turns out he was grieving too: grieving the intimacy we both wanted and grieving watching me suffer. Naming both of our pain instead of protecting each other from it was a huge turning point in our relationship.
→ Resource: "When Sex Hurts" by Andrew Goldstein, Caroline Pukall, Jill Krapf & Irwin Goldstein (a great resource for both couples to read and understand the science behind pain with sex) + open-ended couples questions from The Vaginismus Network’s “Partners” section.
7. I felt dismissed every time someone said we should “just do other things.”
Oral, hands, toys…it all felt like a consolation prize and a reminder of what I couldn’t do. I didn’t want substitutes. I wanted PIV intercourse. Is that so bad?
→ Validation: you’re allowed to want PIV sex. Wanting it doesn’t make you broken or ungrateful.
8. I have a love-hate relationship with dilator therapy. Still do. Sorry, not sorry.
Dilator therapy was very difficult for me, mentally and emotionally. It was also incredibly difficult to stay consistent with, especially when it was anxiety-inducing, often painful, and slow to see progress (especially at larger sizes). And when people compare it to just “going to the gym” … aka just buck up, show up, and do it… I wilt a little inside. No, it wasn’t my lack of adherence or discipline that is to blame. The reality is that the work to make progress IS difficult. IS hard. And you are not the only person that feels this way.
→ What actually worked better for me in the end: Finding better providers: sex therapists, MDs, and pelvic floor PTs that had a lot of experience and listened well. Herman & Wallace has a great provider directory and so does APTA Pelvic Health.
And last, but certainly not least, my husband invented the HydroSlix™ Vaginal Liner, which was a huge turning point in my personal journey. Integrating it into the bedroom changed our marriage and sex life for the better. It helped give me confidence to insert a finger for the first time, and eventually, even my partner’s penis!
9. I felt shame and hopelessness as weeks turned into months turned into years.
I’d promise my partner “one more month of dilators and we’ll be fine.” That turned into 2 more years. The longer it went, the more I believed this was permanent.
→ The shift: accepting that the solutions I was being given weren’t working for me. Period. I needed more support.
10. I genuinely didn’t believe I would ever get better.
When you’ve tried “everything” and nothing works for years, hope feels delusional.
→ What pulled me out: finding one single story of someone who took longer than me but fully recovered. Then another. Then another. I clung to those stories like oxygen. I found subreddits and support groups to be incredibly helpful to see that I wasn’t alone.
If you have made it this far, thank you for reading this small, transparent look into my personal sexual health journey. My thoughts and opinions are just that – thoughts and opinions. I firmly believe that we are all entitled to our own experiences and perspectives and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share a snippet of mine.
With all my love and solidarity,
Kelley
Co-founder of Pelva