Sex and intimacy often go hand in hand. Sex, when you think of the definition and what comes into your head when you think of the word sex or sexual relations, you probably think of the active sex, having sex with a partner.
Sex or sexual relations is sort of as the active sex itself. Sex also made it be defined as being male or female. Now intimacy is a different concept. Intimacy is communication on a deeper more profound level, on all levels using verbal and nonverbal communication. It is that closeness that occurs when you want to be connected with another human being. So intimacy is that connection caused by communication on all levels, on a deeper more profound level. Intimacy can go hand in hand with sex, and it may be a part of the sexual relations.
But intimacy can also be achieved through other ways of becoming close. Sex also can happen without intimacy. But most often sex and intimacy come hand in hand; most human beings crave closeness or understanding from other human beings, and that is the intimacy portion of sex and intimacy
Another thing that can commonly cause pain in women in the genital area is a lack of estrogen. Sometimes estrogen local estrogen replacement is necessary to normalize the tissue of the genitalia and stop the pain.
Certainly, post-menopausal women will have pain because of the of estrogen. Not all women postmenopausal but some women will have pain due to dryness and due to a lack of estrogen is keeping the tissue supply and normal. So what happens is we use local estrogen replacement which can be very safe. Your gynecologist will often order this for you. But a local estrogen replacement can normalize the tissue and sometimes decrease pain.
Local estrogens often can be safe even with patients with breast cancer. So you need to talk to your doctor to see if it is safe for you. Remember a local estrogen treatment is not going to have much effect on the rest of your body but treat the vaginal area.
If you can’t use estrogen sometimes a vaginal moisturizer, a product that will moisturize the vagina that does not contain a hormone can be helpful too. We use many different treatments to treat pain disorders, and we would look at you individually and determine the best medicine to move forward and treat your pain. You don’t have to suffer in silence. Pain disorders are common, and they often can be addressed.
If you have sexual dysfunction problems you can ask any physician; you can go to your primary care doctor, your internal medicine, urologist whoever you are seeing. And if they don’t want to treat you then maybe they don’t know how or they don’t do that in their practice, they can certainly refer you to somebody who does.
