You Sure It Isn't Psychosomatic?

Suggesting that vulvar pain is due to sexual issues is like saying back pain is due to moral issues.

Your back hurts? Must be because you're not an upstanding citizen. Maybe it's the red light you ran, the tax return you fudged, the friend you left lying there all dusty in your closet who's become a sting in your spine.

An organ's main function needn't be its dysfunction. No organ's main function is to grow cancer. Celiac intestines aren't suicidal about having to digest.

So why is it that a pained vulva means a woman has a problem with sex?

Way too many men have suggested so to me -- and I'm sure at least some of them said it because they thought I might have a revelation and suddenly be willing to screw them. Or because I might try that age-old vulvodynia cure of having more sex. You know, the one that doctors mention right off the bat and write about like crazy in medical journals.

Not a single woman has suggested to me that my pain is due to sexual issues. And there's the empathy schism. Another woman may not be able to imagine chronic vulvar pain, but she doesn't have a problem believing it's possible, and that it's possible free of psychosomatic root.

Why do guys think we're afraid of the dong?

Why can't we be into the dong but not into THEIRS?

A guy at work asked me if I won't date him because he's black. I told him of course not. His response: "What's the problem, then?"

YOU.

The guys who have called my pain psychosomatic are (almost) all complete lame-o's compared to me sexually and would be the ones in pain if sex pain actually worked that way. Lack of confidence, compensation, body issues, fear of intimacy, fear of love, general hey-how-big-is-my-penis obsessions...

We all have our issues, yes. I have some, though I'm not always sure of what they are. The key thing is that I have always believed myself to be a sex goddess. I don't have an explanation for that belief, and I don't really have evidence besides whatever sings in my hips. I've always liked sex and always felt comfortable with it. Some friends and I have based our entire inside-joke repertoire around sex, including the friend with whom I'm planning a tropical island swarming with naked men and centered on a penis visible from space...

I like sex so much that vulvodynia has made atheist me wonder whether there really is a god -- that vengeful Christian god whose morals I must've offended with my pagan celebration. I masturbated too much! Someone's interpretation of the Bible was right!

To suggest that my pain is due to my psychology and not my biology -- at first it bothered me, and then I realized what a fabulous private world I have that these guys can never touch. That some may never approach in all their earthly years. It's a painting versus art: some never learn the difference.

One already knew it.

We've slept apart three nights since our first date two weeks ago. I'm not a dater, dudes. I'd say I don't know what's going on, but I do.