A woman who saved herself until marriage discovered an agonising condition on her wedding night.
Kendra Blair, 39, had remained a virgin until her wedding night and was excited to consummate her marriage – but didn’t quite get the night of her dreams.
The hospital insurance verifier, from Missouri, US, experienced a burning pain when she got intimate which hurt so much she hyperventilated.
The excruciating pain meant that Kendra remained a virgin for 12 years after getting tying the knot.
Eventually, the condition meant that she and her husband divorced.
Since the breakdown of her relationship, Kendra has been diagnosed with vaginismus and is now campaigning to raise awareness of the condition.
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She said: “Not being able to have sex and fall pregnant – things other people take for granted – left me feeling isolated and broken. This condition really messes with you mentally.
"Normal conversations you hear day to day – about someone being pregnant, or people talking about having sex – make women with vaginismus feel really messed up.”
She added: “I felt like I wasn’t a real woman.”
Kendra was raised in a strict Christian home and sex before marriage was not allowed.
Kendra realised that something was not going to plan when she was 19.
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She said: "We tried to have sex when we went to bed the day after our wedding, but it just wasn’t happening. I thought I was just nervous, because I didn’t know what to expect.
”I grew up in a very strong Christian conservative home and sex wasn’t something anyone in my family ever spoke about. But when I tried to have sex, it felt like there was a bone there that my husband couldn’t get through."
Since the first attempt, every attempt at intimacy would leave Kendra with a painful burning feeling.
After struggling for months – she finally called her mother for advice.
She said: “She thought maybe I had a thick hymen – the skin surrounding or partially covering the vaginal opening – and just needed to really relax.
“My husband and I had endured months of frustration and I knew there was something else wrong, but everyone just kept telling me to relax.”
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After confiding in her husband’s stepmother she was taken to a gynaecologist.
Unfortunately, the doctors examination caused the same painful reaction as sex.
She said: “My automatic reaction was to hyperventilate, close my legs, squirm to get away and push the doctor away saying, ‘Don’t touch me'.
“She told me I’d have to make another appointment and they would put me out, so she could examine me, but I didn’t, as she also told me just to relax and stop overreacting.
“She had no idea what the problem was, but I saw her smirk and, whether I was right or not, it felt like she was making fun of me.”
It took another five years until Kendra felt brave enough to see another medical professional.
Sadly, by that point it had badly affected her marriage.
She said: “It did affect our relationship badly and we ended up splitting up after 12 years.
“We had other issues going on – not just the sex – so we didn’t get divorced just because of vaginismus, but it was a factor. My ex started getting bitter and resentful towards me because of it.
"Unsurprisingly, he was very frustrated and questioned whether I was holding out on purpose. I think this was because, after a while I stopped wanting to work on it, I didn’t want to try to have sex because it causes a really agonising burning pain and that’s not fun.”
The second doctor diagnosed Kendra with vaginismus and gave her dilators which can help to stretch and retrain the vaginal muscles.
Kendra was relieved as it was confirmed that she “wasn’t crazy” and she discovered that other women had the condition.
She said: I was scared about using the dilators, because I couldn’t even insert a tampon.
“Despite his occasional frustration, my then husband was pretty supportive… he stood by me more than a lot of men would, considering that we didn’t have sex for 12 years.
“He was getting impatient, though, and had started putting a timeline on having kids. I understood his frustration, but it felt like extra pressure.”
Frustratingly, Kendra couldn’t even insert the smallest dilator – the size of a small tampon – and she sank into depression.
She said: “There were days when I even thought about dying.
“I’d even tell my husband to go and have sex or kids with someone else.”
Kendra said as she got older people would ask them when they were gong to have children, but that her condition prevented her from her life long dream of motherhood.
In 2012, Kendra’s marriage ended.
Then she met her current boyfriend, Sean Rice, 38.
Kendra said that during her dating years she made sure to mention her condition to three men – otherwise she felt “deceitful”.
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She said: “I seem to remember chatting to Sean online and sending him a text about it before we even met.
“He said, ‘I’m not in it for the sex, I want a relationship with you. We can deal with this down the road'. It was an amazing response and one you don’t get very often.”
The couple will celebrate their first anniversary in May and have had penetrative sex twice.
She claims that it is partly because of Sean’s sensitivity and the support of a group of 2,000 vaginismus sufferers she met on Facebook.
She said: “I don’t feel as broken as I once did. I’ve been able to have penetrative sex a couple of times, so that’s made me feel less guilty and less like I’m stopping Sean from doing something he wants to do.”
The people in her Facebook group recommended physical therapy in the form of pelvic floor exercises in combination with dilators to help the condition.
Kendra said: “When I joined the vaginismus support group, a ton of women had already been going to physical therapy and shared their experiences.
“That kicked me into action. – they took the fear of the unknown away from me.”
Kendra practiced her exercises with a therapist for five days.
She worries that sufferers of vaginismus are not taken seriously by doctors and often have to self-diagnose.
She said: “A lot of women diagnose themselves, because they see the doctor and get told they’re overreacting.
“Luckily, physical therapists seem to know all about it and are very sympathetic, but, in my experience, doctors often aren’t. And it’s very belittling to be dismissed.”
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Kendra is now excited about the future and now believes that a solution is in sight.
She said: “I’ve met some women who’ve been able to dilate and once they’ve got past a certain point have found it’s never happened again.
“But for some of us, we progress and then we have a ‘bad muscle day’ and go backwards, which can leave you feeling down in the dumps.”
The couple are even thinking about having children together.
She added: “I’ve always dreamed of being a mother and so have always felt a void there.
“I’m worried about my age now, but Sean and I have decided if we can’t have our own biological child over the next couple of years then we will adopt.”
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