Happy New Year, and a resource page for VVS.

This has been a wonderful holiday season for both of us, as I hope it has been for all of you!  We spent an old-fashioned Scandinavian Christmas with Z's parents and his sister, her spouse, and their kids.  And the week since Boxing Day with my brother, his wonderful wife, my three beautiful nieces and their families, so I'm seriously peopled out!

On top of family visits, parties, and entertaining, I've been trying to squeeze in some time to get started on the book that I've been promising many of you for over a year.  It's not been easy going, but I'm determined to push ahead and at least get the manuscript in reasonable shape this winter.  Because formatting and editing depend so much on consistency and continuity, I'm finding it very hard to get it done when my time is broken up into little chunks, so I probably won't post here again for several months.  I'm also seriously thinking of taking a week of vacation time from work in February or March and just locking myself in a room somewhere with my laptop until it's done.  We'll see.

In the meantime, if you want to be on the list for a free copy of the ebook on launch day, whenever that is, be sure you have sent me a request with an email address that you check reasonably often!

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As noted in the title, I've just added a resource page on VVS, vulvar vestibulitis syndrome, which usually manifests itself as a raw burning or stinging pain in the vulva or just inside the vagina, in or near the vestibule or entrance area.  It occurs during and after contact, either pressure or rubbing, so it can make intercourse very painful.

Over the years, I've received questions about tantra from a number of women who could not have intercourse without a great deal of pain, and who weren't getting help from their doctors.  This resource page on VVS is meant to go along with the page that I posted last month on vaginismus, one of the other principal causes of female pain during sex.

Most of the other sources of vulvodynia or dyspareunia (vulvar and vaginal pain), including cysts, infections, ovarian problems, endometriosis, and more, have fairly obvious causes that doctors understand, but vaginismus and VVS are fairly common problems that are apparently never discussed in medical school, so doctors don't recognize them very well and they often go untreated.

As mentioned last month, one letter came from a couple who had been married three years and were still virgins, asking how they could do tantric sex without penetration. Another letter came from a woman who felt almost suicidal because sex with her husband left her in agony, with a burning pain that persisted even after he finished and withdrew.  Doctors had provided no help, and she wanted to learn to give him lingam massages instead and persuade him to give up on penetrative sex.

These and other letters sparked a number of conversations with my own gynecologist and considerable research on my part, as I tried to understand the problems. This is what I'm trying to share in these two resource pages.  If you know someone suffering from pain during intercourse, please remember that these are here and available.

Have a safe New Year's Eve and a happy, successful, and passionate new year!