Scarleteen

I’ve never participated in partnered sex, but when I masturbate, after I orgasm (what I assume is orgasm, lol) my labia starts to feel really itchy. It’s always on the same side, in the same place along the labia.

The quality of the itch isn’t like a yeast infection, it’s not an STI, it isn’t related to my laundry soap, my nails are kept really short, and putting vaseline on top of the spot only helps a little.

The feeling it’s most like is when you walk through a spiderweb and pick all the big pieces of it off and then spend the next couple of minutes picking at air, convinced you missed a strand or two. I’ve thought that maybe a stray hair was in the way or something from when the labia was moved around, but close examination with a hand mirror shows nothing of the sort.

The best guess I can come up with is something to do with blood flow, but any time I try to search for answers, I just get the same set of “yeast infection, STI, laundry soap, friction” answers which is unsatisfying and doesn’t seem to answer the actual question. The other possibility is that what I’m thinking of as “orgasm” isn’t actually it, and what I’m interpreting as “itchiness” is in fact the plateau stage? If I keep stimulating the area (which is the only thing that sufficiently distracts from the itch) then eventually it rolls right back into pleasurable masturbating, only for the process to restart once I’ve thought I was done.

The only way I’ve found to reliably stop it is to either ignore it for a couple of hours OR to quit masturbating while in the midst of it and then ignore the arousal for a couple hours.

Sorry for the hyperspecific question, but I’ll happily take general resources on post-orgasm physiology in vulvae if anyone’s got those too.

Thanks in advance,
Sophy

Hi Sophy,

There are a few different things that might be at play here. One might indeed be friction, but not in the sense that the area is unlubricated and that's what makes it irritated. If you think about other parts of your body, sometimes repeated touches on them can create a sort of itch for seemingly no reason. Another possibility could be that something about how vaginal discharge gathers on your vulva means there's little bits of it that almost feel stuck or itchy, or leave you feeling like something is still there even when it's been rubbed away.

You could also be right that this has something to do with where in your sexual response you notice it happening. When you look at this article, do the descriptions of orgasm feel like things you experience before the itching starts: Sexual Response & Orgasm: A Users Guide.