Something hurts

[BlueTrueMU]

Hello people of Scarleteen.

My name is Blue, and I do have a question about anal sex.

My boyfriend and I really like it to try out different things, and anal sex was one of these things. We do have one problem tho. We do want to use lube to make it go way easier, but when we are using lube (and it doesn't matter if it's oil- or water based) it hurts a lot for me. Even a slight touch makes me shake because of the pain. We've tried different brands of lube by now but nothing does not hurt. But when we're not using lube at all it doesn't hurt.

How is it possible that it hurts this much while we're using lube and it doesn't hurt when we don't use it?

I'm looking forward to a response.
-Blue.

[Heather]

Welcome to the boards, Blue.

I agree, this is really perplexing. And anal sex without lube really isn't a great idea, just because that tissue is so delicate. So, I have a few questions to see if we can;t get to the bottom of this (no pun intended, I swear).

1) Do you have any kind of sexual trauma in your life history?
2) Do you now or have you ever had other kinds of experiences with things being painful that seemingly should not be causing pain?
3) With the brands of lubricant you have been using, can you find any common ingredients? A painful allergic reaction just from momentary contact with something like lube would be super-unusual, but you never know, sometimes our bodies do really weird things.
4) Do you have any kind of negative feelings about or associations with lube or using it?
5) Do you have the same reaction when using a lubricant for masturbation or other kinds of sex?

[BlueTrueMU]

Hi Heather.

Thank you that you want to help me figuring this out, since I can't find anything properly with Google, and I'll answer your questions one by one.

1) Yes I do have a sexual trauma from my past but because of my boyfriend I got over it completely.
2) I don't have or had something that hurts while it shouldn't. This is the first problem I got of this kind.
3 & 5) I'm not allergic to any of the ingredients what's used in these kinds of lubricant. We use it as well with normal vaginal sex, but then nothing is wrong. Everything feels really good then. It doesn't hurt, and I'm not getting an allergic reaction at all.
4) I don't have any negative thoughts, feelings or associations with lube, so there's no reason why this pain is coming from that.

It might not be the longest answers, but I tried to answer it the best I could.

-Blue

[Heather]

That's alright, I can work with these.

You know, I hate to say this -- and I'm a survivor myself, so I get the allure of being all the way over it -- but there's just no such thing as getting over that (or most kinds of) trauma completely.

There's such a thing as learning to cope and deal, and we can certainly heal a lot. But all of that tends to take a lot of time to happen -- years, and more realistically, decades -- and a lot of work, and it's not going to happen just because of a sexual or romantic partner, even if that person is highly educated or experienced with sexual trauma and helping someone heal from it. People can do all of that without the help of a counselor or other qualified professionals, but then it usually tends to take even longer.

So, probably you're not all the way over it. Given your age, even if it happened in childhood, probably you're just *starting* to get over it, to be honest. I don't say that to make things seem hopeless (they're so not), but to help you be realistic, including being aware that it may well be this reaction has something to do with that. Given the rest of your answers, it sounds like this might very possibly be the source of what's going on, since I can't see any other likely reason, and experiencing pain from sexual things where pain shouldn't otherwise be happening (like, for example, just being touched lightly around the anus with a lubricated finger hurting when it doesn't hurt when it's dry) is a very common thing for sexual trauma survivors.

Would you be okay with me asking a few more questions about your trauma (what it was, and what kind of work you have done to process and heal from it), and with how you're experiencing pain with this wanted activity?

(Just FYI, my workday is over very soon, so I may not pick this up again until morning, my time.)

[BlueTrueMU]

Hi Heather.
Since your working day was almost over yesterday, I didn't even try to reply to your last message. It was also like 1:45 am for me at that time.

I still don't like it to talk about what happened, but I do want to in this case. But if possible not over forum posts but if there's something like private messages, I would like it to switch to there. Because it's still something difficult for me to talk about it and in my opinion not everyone has to know what happened to me in the past.

I hope to get a reply of you soon
-Blue

[Heather]

Blue:

I'm not working our direct services otherwise today, but if you'd like, I'd be happy to set up a time off-schedule to talk with you using our live chat, which would be private to everyone but staff and yourself. If that sounds good to you, let me know what time would work. If today doesn't, we do have open chat hours tomorrow from 2 - 5 PM PST.

[BlueTrueMU]

I'd love it to have that moment of private talk with you tomorrow. Even though it means that it is from 11pm my time, but that's not such a big of a deal for me

[Heather]

I can certainly show up for chat tomorrow when it's open, but if you like, I can also open it up earlier for you so you don't have to talk quite so late if you don't want to. How about at noon my time (which I think is 9 yours)?

Otherwise, if it's fine to be late, I'll be here at 2 my time when chat usually opens.

[BlueTrueMU]

If you do mean with noon 12pm, yes that's at 9 for me (if your timezone Is PST) Being able to talk at that time would be even better for me since I've to wake up tomorrow morning at 4am for 5h of traveling to my boyfriend

[Heather]

You got it: it's in my calendar. The link for our live chat (which will let you there when it's staffed) is: http://www.scarleteen.com/webim/client. ... le=en&url=

Talk tomorrow.

[BlueTrueMU]

Hi Heather.

I think there's a bus with the live chat function. I wanted to join it, filled in my name, email address and said that I had an appointment to talk with you over there, but it gave me the error message 'Please fill in "Your name"' and I couldn't reenter my name in there. The name I filled in was my username I use over here on the forums as well.

Unfortunately I don't have access to a pc I would be able to use, so currently there's for me no possibility to join the chat. Sorry for this, and that I made you get earlier on to here.

I will most likely not have an opportunity as well to join the live chat in the next 3 weeks, but when I can on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday I will try joining the chat between 2pm and 5pm PST.

Again sorry that it has to go like this.

-Blue

[Heather]

I'm so sorry it's giving you technical troubles! It's certainly not your fault. I wish I was able to fix it for you, but the best I can do is let our developer know about it.

I certainly am glad to talk with you here on the boards if you like, but if, as it sounded yesterday, that's just not something you're comfortable with, I understand. If you can think of a way to make what we have to work with work for you, please let me know. We can talk in-the-meantime strategy, if you like (which probably means just skipping anal play right now that doesn't bring its own lube, as it were, like oral sex, but still, maybe you want to talk more about your options).