All medicines, vitamins or other supplements you take, including doses.Your key medical information, including conditions for which you're being treated.Your sexual problems, including when they began and how often and under what conditions they happen.To get ready for the conversation with your healthcare professional, make a list of: Your primary healthcare professional might diagnose and treat the problem or refer you to a specialist. Talking with your healthcare professional is the first step in resolving painful intercourse. Sensual massage, kissing and mutual masturbation offer alternatives to intercourse that might be more comfortable, more fulfilling and more fun than your regular routine. Until vaginal penetration becomes less painful, you and your partner might find other ways to be intimate. Try different brands until you find one you like. A personal lubricant can make sex more comfortable. You might reduce pain by delaying penetration until you feel fully aroused. Longer foreplay can help stimulate your natural lubrication. If you need your partner to go slow, say so. Talk about what feels good and what doesn't. In this position, you might be able to regulate penetration to a depth that feels good to you. If you have sharp pain during thrusting, try different positions, such as being on top. To help with pain during sex, you and your partner could try to: Talking to a counselor or sex therapist may help resolve these issues.Ĭognitive behavioral therapy also can be helpful in changing negative thought patterns and behaviors. If you and your partner have avoided intimacy because of painful intercourse, you also might need help improving communication with your partner and restoring sexual intimacy.
If sex has been painful for some time, you might have a negative emotional response to sexual stimulation even after treatment. For this therapy, you learn vaginal relaxation exercises that can ease pain.Ĭounseling or sex therapy. Some therapies that don’t involve medicine also might help with painful intercourse: It's a capsule you place inside the vagina daily. It also carries a risk of stroke, blood clots and cancer of the lining of the uterus, called the endometrium.Īnother medicine to relieve painful intercourse is prasterone (Intrarosa). Ospemifene acts like estrogen in the vaginal lining.ĭrawbacks are that the medicine might cause hot flashes.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the medicine ospemifene (Osphena) to treat moderate to severe dyspareunia in women who have problems with vaginal lubrication. Often, low estrogen levels can be treated with topical estrogen applied directly to the vagina. Changing medicines that can cause lubrication problems also might eliminate your symptoms.įor many postmenopausal women, painful intercourse is caused by too little lubrication resulting from low estrogen levels. If an infection or medical condition contributes to your pain, treating the cause might resolve your problem. Treatment options vary depending on the cause of the pain.