Re: medical celibates

September 27, 2004

> Is anyone here a medical celibate? To illustrate an example, my last

> long-term relationship with a man ended in 1999 due to many reasons (not the

least

> of which was the vv and IC; both conditions killed our sex life, which had

> been very good). I had a short-lived relationship with a woman in 2001

during

> which the sex was not painful -- but when I tried to have sex with a man

> again, it hurt like hell. There was no difference despite being on different

> types of treatment. I thought it would be better since I could masturbate

and

> not experience pain, but actual penetration with a penis or finger left me

> almost howling in agony. Now, due to this fact and other factors (like PTSD

and

> depression, not to mention that I am primarily heterosexual so another gay

> relationship is not a consideration), I am staying the hell away from

intimate

> relationships and basically consider myself a medical celibate. Anyone else

> in this situation to some degree?>>

Hi ,

If you're thinking just eliminating sex from your life and intimate

relationships (physical and emotional) from your life will solve your

problems with vv/vvs, it won't. Why deny yourself the the wonder, joy

and pleasure of having a loving relationship with someone? If you're

going to pursue a life of celibacy, you do cut yourself off from love

and having an emotional bond with someone that is the icing on the cake

of life.

I don't get the idea that you're opposed to sex and having someone to

share your life with, just pain and having to reveal that sex with you

may be more complicated than the woman in line behind you at the

grocery store. If someone falls in love with you, knows about your vv/

vvs and if he is the person for you - vv/vvs is something he can accept

and work around.

I've never been married and by the time I graduated from college, I

realized that I do enjoy sex but having sex just because I'm attracted

to someone or enjoy dating someone, didn't satisfy me emotionally -

just physically. It was pleasurable, but for me - something was

missing. I realized I needed a deep emotional bond - beyond a crush,

infatuation, etc... to make love with a man.

Along came years of dating lots of men - some that were wonderful

people and some that were jerks and lots inbetween the two. The

majority I never had intercourse with. A lot of them I enjoyed the

sexual contact we had, but always stopped it before intercourse. I

just didn't feel what I needed for them. Some men I dated for more

than an year and never had sex with them. I'm sure some thought I was

frigid, which I'm not.

Eight years ago vvs entered my life. I wasn't in a sexual relationship

at the time, although I was dating a man seriously. One I had an

emotional bond with, but I didn't trust him - so sex wasn't issue.

While I was dating the guy I didn't trust, I also dated a few other

men, mostly to get myself away from the guy I didn't trust - kind of my

way of severing the emotional bond I had with him so I could make the

eventual break up final. Two of the relationships never went far

enough for me to consider sex and with the third - we were both very

attracted to each other, very good friends but decided we probably

weren't each other's Mr/Ms. Rights and decided to back off before we

ruined a fantastic friendship. I went onto date another guy for an

year and a half that was crazy about me and although I was very fond of

him, I just couldn't fall in love with him. Because I couldn't, I

always stopped short of intercourse. He knew about my vv/vvs and

tended to think that was the reason I always stopped. But it wasn't.

Next I dated a couple of guys that I liked, but just wasn't physically

attracted to, so sex wasn't an issue. Then my Mom became very ill and

I took care of her for a couple of years - I just didn't have the

energy for dating.

Seven years ago, one fall afternoon in '97 - a man IMed me and said he

liked my posts on a Rolling Stones mailing list I subscribe to. The

Stones were touring that fall, I was traveling to as many shows as I

could get to and S would often IM me after I'd been to a concert to

hear what I thought about it. Before I knew it, we were talking

several days a week - an hour or so a day. We branched out from

talking about the Stones to other interests in our lives. S always

enjoyed my dating catastrophe stories, so I often shared those. We

tried to meet before a Stones concert in '99, but we missed each other

at the mailing list's pre-concert party.

Then in '99, my Mom became ill. I was sticking close to home to care

for her but in June '00, I did go to a Who concert in Detroit. I think

I gushed about that concert to S for weeks. In September, S mentioned

he had an extra ticket for the Cleveland Who concert and asked if I'd

like to see the Who again. My Mom was doing better and I decided a

couple of days away from each other would probably do us both a lot of

good since we'd been inseparable for months through her chemo and

radiation treatments.

I noticed while I was getting ready for the concert (deciding what to

wear, make-up, hair, etc...) I was acting like I had a major crush on

S. Which kind of amused me because I'd only seen one photo of him a

couple of years earlier and I really did not remember what he looked

like and it wasn't a date, we were going as friends. But there I was,

packing three outfits for the concert because I couldn't decide what to

wear. While my Mom was going through cancer treatment, she was often

hospitalized and I would only leave her to go home to feed my cat and

take a shower. I was with her twenty hours a day and I'd have my

laptop with me in the hospital and spend most of the day online

researching her illness and talking to S. I decided I was putting so

much effort into my appearance just because it was going to be our

first in person meeting after three years of being online friends and I

wanted to make a good impression. (Don't you love how we lie to

ourselves?).

Off to Cleveland I went, expecting to meet just another person I'd met

through an online mailing list. Over the years I've probably met over

400 people from the various lists I participate in and it wasn't

something unusual for me and I wasn't expecting anything more than the

enjoyment of finally talking in person. Was I wrong. <ggg>

We were meeting at a restaurant in Cleveland and I got there early. I

sat down in the lobby to wait. I knew S was attending the concert with

six other men and when I saw a herd of men crossing the parking lot

towards the restaurant's entrance, I was sure it was S's group. I

didn't know which one was him looking out the window since I had no

idea what he looked like, but the second he walked in the door - I knew

him. Not only did I know it was him, he knocked my socks off and when

he saw me sitting there and smiled, he swept me off my feet.

I was so stunned - it was like I was hit with lightning, I was tongue

tied the rest of the evening. I barely talked. I couldn't even look

at S. Before we left the restaurant for the concert, I went to the

powder room. When I returned, S was worried because I was so quiet and

asked me if I was enjoying myself and my comment was: " I came back

from the powder room, didn't I? " The poor guy. He has spent the last

four years teasing me about that night and that statement.

Of course, I was so overwhelmed by my feelings for S, I never noticed

his reaction to me. He was as lightning struck as I was. But he

remembered to talk. <ggg> He did though interpret my tonguetieness to

mean I wasn't attracted to him at all. So we went back to being online

friends, thinking the other one wasn't interested in anything more than

friendship. Although we did grow a lot closer as friends over the next

two years.

My Mom passed away at the end of '01. By the summer of '02, I was

ready to date again and sharing some of the funny, offensive, etc...

replies I'd get to my online personal ad with S. The Stones went on

tour that fall and I started dating again and I was sharing my date

from hell experiences with S again. He always seemed to enjoy them.

In September '02, a friend and I drove to Philadelphia to see the

Stones. At the end of the weekend when we were leaving Philly, I asked

M if we could stop and have dinner in Ohio with S. M wasn't excited

about that, he just wanted to get back to Michigan. I pouted all the

way across the state of Pennsylvania until M caved and said we could

have exactly one hour for dinner with S. I think it was that afternoon

driving across PA that I realized I had this deep emotional bond with

S. Of course, I told myself it was just because we'd grown so close

while my Mom was ill. Especially during the last month of her life

when she was in the hospital and S was always there on line for me to

talk to. I remember one afternoon a week before my Mom died we were

talking about 1pm and I said I had to be keeping him from his work and

he said he had nothing to do until a meeting at 2:30. The next thing I

knew it was 4pm and I asked why he didn't go to the meeting and he said

because I needed to talk to him more.

Anyway, after we had dinner in September of '02, I told myself that it

was just an attachment that would would fade away and go back to just

friendship as I swung more back into my life and away from the one

where I was a cancer caretaker.

Three weeks later I went to the Cleveland Stones concert with S. I was

late for the pre-concert party and S became worried and asked M if he

thought I'd show up. M told him: " If you're here, she will be here. "

<ggg> I sat next to S during the concert and it was pure torture. I

wanted to reach for his hand something awful, but I am a very reserved

person and I don't do stuff like that. Although I am quite a flirt -

but I wasn't around S, I guess I was afraid he might reject me or

something. Because I didn't flirt with him - he thought I wasn't

attracted to him.

A couple of months later I had a little crush on another man and S went

through the roof. In the past, with all the men I dated, S had never

said anything negative about them unless I did first. Suddenly he was

against me dating someone. I was confused. Until seven weeks later

when we were at a Stones concert in Pittsburgh and during the fourth

song, he leaned down and said: " I'm in love with you. " That rocked my

little world in ways I'm still finding. I started to tell him he

wasn't, then I stopped and said nothing for four more songs. S kept

asking if I was okay and I'd nod yes. Finally he asked if I was ever

going to say anything to ever again and I said: " That was the most

precious thing anyone has ever said to me. "

And that was how my relationship with S went from years of friendship

to romantic. It didn't take me long to realize that my feelings for

him were love, that I had a deep emotional bond with him and had been

in love with him for years. That sped the dating relationship up a lot

faster than I'm used to and especially the sex and vv/vvs issue.

Four months later we had made love for the first time and intercourse

was very painful. If I didn't feel the way I do about S, I probably

would have ended the relationship and just given up on having an

loving, intimate, sexual relatioinship with a man. But I do love him

and I want to share a sexual relationship with him that includes

intercourse.

S doesn't care if we ever have intercourse. That's what he says, but

if we didn't, I'm sure he would miss it. But I know intercourse isn't

the reason he loves me and he is quite satisfied with our sex life when

it doesn't include intercourse. He's always been very supportive and

trying whatever we could to relieve my vvs pain.

I had been in a vvs remission for a couple of years prior to starting a

sexual relationship with S. So I went back to searching the various

vv/vvs list archives and reading all the posts for an answer. I knew

taking six weeks of Vioxx had put me into the remission, but it wasn't

a drug I wanted to take long term and I figured I would have to if I

had an active sex life. I discovered Atropine cream and then the

Lidocaine Cotton Ball treatment. I've been able to have pain free sex

since August '03. Sometimes it is still painful, but usually because

I've gotten lax in using the two treatments or we've gone too long in

between having sex. When you have a lot of inflammation, the tissue

doesn't stretch as well - so if I go without intercourse for awhile -

the tissue seems to lose it's stretchability and it hurts a bit again.

But since August '03 I've either had pain free sex or if it did hurt -

it was never worse than a 2 on a scale of 10 - with 10 being the worse

it ever was with S. I no longer have flares after sex since I started

using Atropine cream.

I'm a few years older than you and I never thought I'd find someone

like S. But I have. I wish I didn't have vvs - but I do. I'm glad

that I didn't cut off my sexual feelings when I developed vvs - but

instead have done my best to work around the condition. I would hate

to think I gave up on love and sex because of my vvs, I wouldn't have S

in my live as my lover if I had and S's love has brought me so much joy

to my life.

If you're considering celibacy because you don't think you will ever

feel sexual again or because sex will always hurt because of your vvs,

don't give up. Just keep looking for a treatment that will work for

you and pay attention so you don't miss that guy who walks into the

room and sweeps you off of your feet with just a smile.

Debbie

Tiger

September 27, 2004