Whenever I’m having sex or masturbating, no matter how into it am, my vagina will suddenly dry up in the middle and become tighter again (I won’t be able to get my fingers in as deep). What’s going on? How can I stop this?
Hello!
When it comes to our bodies and feeling good in them -- be it with sex , with food, with movement, or anything else -- it's usually better to listen and respond to what our bodies are telling us than to try and tell them what to do.
When our bodies just won't do or keep doing certain things, it's often because they just can't do or keep doing those things, or can't without risking injury. When they act like they're worn out , it's usually because they are. And when they will not do what we want them to, it can be because they are doing what our brains and all the systems of the body -- who have greater wisdom than our wants -- are directing them to do. Continuing vaginal intercourse , for example, when you're not lubricated enough or when your vagina , as an organ, is just done for the time being not only is unlikely to feel good, it also risks injury, so how smart is your vag to be like, "Hey, seriously, no more like this: I'm trying to tell you every way I can," when that's the case? Very smart.
That doesn't mean that you can't still explore and experience pleasure when that happens, though. It just means you need to listen to your body and try to answer it by meeting its needs, rather than trying to push it to do things it's resisting that you might want without making any changes or accommodations. If the sexual ideas or pre-written scripts we have for our bodies don't work with how our bodies actually are, we can't usually change our bodies to suit them (and I'd posit that we usually shouldn't try to, either). What we can change are those ideas, those scripts, or our approaches. We can choose to think about and do things differently that both accommodate our bodies and the pleasure we're seeking.
You can't usually make it so that if and when your body isn't producing enough lubrication for your comfort or pleasure, it changes to produces the amount you want. We can't force our bodies to lubricate on demand, and there's no magic button or technique for it. They do it how and when they want, for the most part. Anyone can still have exactly as much lubrication as they want anyway, by doing what most folks do: by using a lubricant to accommodate your body and its needs, instead.
Bodies just can't be relied on to produce enough fluid, or to produce fluid at a given time, to ensure that all or even any of the sexual things we may want to do with them will feel good. That's just how this aspect of bodies is, no matter what kind of body you have and no matter what any of your unique health conditions may or may not be. But we can rely on lubricants for that. If we just set ourselves up to always have some lube that we like -- and you can read all about it here -- on hand, problem solved! Having lube makes it so that you can just enjoy yourself without worrying about if your bodies will or won't, are or aren't, producing enough lubrication. It's pretty amazing just how many people, after just buying and using good lube for themselves for the first time, get both physical pleasure and a giant emotional release from starting to walk garbage ideas they had about lubrication and their bodies to the proverbial rubbish bin.
Let's apply this same kind of thinking you what you've said about how your vagina feels sometimes, where it won't yield or open to the level or at the time you want it to.
If you're in any kind of sexual activity that involves your vagina, and at some point, whatever that is doesn't feel good anymore because your vagina isn't responding the way it was earlier, instead of trying to stop your body from having its own response, you'll want to try and respond to it accordingly. There are three basic and different ways you can do that:
1) By doing whatever sexual activity you're already doing differently, to see if that feels any better. With something like vaginal exploration with your fingers, that might mean both adding lubricant -- your vagina being big "nope" may in large part be exactly because it's not adequately lubricated anymore, that happens a lot! -- and using your fingers with your vagina less deeply, more slowly or at a different angle. It may mean switching your focus to a different part of the vagina, like its opening or just the first inch or so (where most of your sensory nerve endings are in it, anyway), or switching your focus in your mind, like with a different fantasy.
2) By choosing to do a different sexual activity or activities altogether, like stopping with any vaginal play, and shifting to focus on masturbation or sex with a partner that focuses more on your external clitoris , labia , the whole of the external genitals or other body parts, or sex with partners where you put a focus on their genitals or other body parts for a while, and circle back to your own genitals when or if they're feeling more amenable and responsive to getting back into the action.
3) By just stopping with sexual activity altogether for the time being, and calling it a day. Sometimes our genitals or other body parts react in the ways they do because they feel done, sometimes even when our brains or neurochemical are still into what's happening.
My favorite thing about learning to think this way about your body -- learning to listen to it and try and respond in kind, rather than being mad at it for not doing what we want it to do and trying to force things -- is that it makes feeling good in it in just about every part of life, not just sex, a lot easier. It makes it easier to accept our bodies as they are, whether that's about how they feel, how they look or what they can or can't do. It also gives us practice at asking others in our lives for adjustments, changes, or whatever that little something extra is (lube, some water, a hand as we get up the stairs) we may need from them now or later, be it about sex, getting on the bus, or managing our workload at school or work. From now through the whole of your life, your body will absolutely pay it forward any and every time you accommodate it instead of trying to make it accommodate you.
