I'm 19 years old and have been suffering from sexual dysfunction for the past two years. This has been extremely difficult given my age, and trying to maintain a healthy relationship on top of this has been both extremely tough and burdensome. I discovered that I was having this problem once my boyfriend and I tried to become sexually active two years ago. Prior to that, I hadn't been sexually active for quite some time, but I hadn't been expecting to feel the pain that I did. It was so excruciating and horrible, like a knife shooting into the right side of my abdomen making it literally impossible to push through it and finish. I thought that maybe it was just a one time thing because it had been so long since I had intercourse, but the pain stayed consistent. I went to the doctor and was told that I was feeling the pain because of a ruptured ovarian cyst, and that given time things would start feeling fine again. The pain hadn't decreased, so I found a specialist for reproductive endocrinology and infertility and was told that it was suspected that I had endometriosis, a condition that can only be diagnosed through surgery. I continued having weekly ultrasounds for months until having this surgery, where I was then diagnosed with interstitial cystitis (bladder pain syndrome, a chronic inflammation of the bladder). To try and resolve this issue, I had been put on crazy medication, done insane diets to to try improve my condition, and I have been doing myofascial release physical therapy once a week for the past eight months. My condition hasn't improved at all and sex still can't even be remotely accomplished within my relationship which has lead my physical therapist and I to believe that I may have been misdiagnosed and that something else may be the work of this even after surgery, medicine, long term PT, diets and all of the medical bills.

At first, my boyfriend was as supportive as he could be with the situation, bringing me to my appointments, checking up on me as often as he could, understanding what was going on with my body and trying to work with me to push through this. We stayed on a forward moving path for a while, but within the past year things have really changed between us. I am so discouraged with this constant reminder that I can't (and potentially may never) be able to provide him with the one thing that I want to be able to give so badly so that we can have that in our relationship. Every time we had tried to become intimate and I've had to say "no" because of my condition has created an extremely large gap between us. I've let my feelings toward this situation and my condition be so pent up for so long, hoping for the best and inevitably expecting the worst that this has took an extremely drastic effect on my confidence. I love my boyfriend, but things have gotten to the point where I feel like what I can bring to our relationship sexually has gotten boring for him and I no longer feel comfortable even trying to please him with the fear of being inferior or as if I'm no longer good enough anymore. For the past couple months I have felt so sick to my stomach with the mere thought of having any type of sexual relations with him because it's just an ongoing reminder of what my body is incapable of letting me do. He has become increasingly frustrated with me for this and it shows through each day with the way he speaks to me, treats me, and treats my condition. Our relationship has become so out of hand that I have never been able to admit this, but I truly believe that I'm suffering from ongoing emotional abuse from him, and things have even been physical towards me on his part.

I know how wrong this is, and in the past I would have never put up with this sort of thing and would have left immediately. It's just so difficult for me to come to terms with this. I can't believe that anybody would ever want to be with me because of my condition, and since he's the person I've been with throughout this entire ordeal he's the only one that will ever even remotely understand (even if it no longer appears to be this way anymore). I feel as though he's the only person on the planet that would ever stay with somebody going through something like this and in my heart I know that it's true.

It's hard for me to believe that I'm so young and that this problem has become such a barrier in my life that it keeps me from feeling even relatively okay with myself. This is the most difficult thing that I have ever had to deal with in my life and I'm only 19. I don't know how to appropriately deal with this or cope with the way that I'm feeling.