Vulvodynia and the Partner: What the Research Reveals About the Relationship in Chronic Pain

If you've been to 10 doctors and they all say, "There's nothing here.

Everything looks normal.

It looks perfectly fine," then what do you say to your partner? "My doctor thinks I'm fine, but I just can't have sex with you." Like, that's really, really difficult to say, so then they usually don't tell their partner.

And we have studies from Sweden, for instance, showing that about 70% of women never tell their partner.

[gentle music]

Could the way your partner responds to your pain, their words, their attitude, their actions in the moment, actually shape the pain itself? And what do ideals of masculinity have to do with why some partners respond in ways that quietly make it worse? My guest today is Linn Myhrfält Stenström, a clinical psychologist and researcher at UiT, who has spent her career studying vulvodynia in relationships.

We get into all of it, the criticism her work attracted when it f- went public, what happens to a couple when they have no name for what's wrong, the three ways partners respond to pain, and why even the loving ones can backfire, and the conflicting ideals of masculinity sitting underneath it all.

What I appreciated most is that Linn, a psychologist herself, is the first to name what psychology can and can't explain, and why the moment we call women's pain psychological, we stop looking for the biomedical answers that are actually there.

This episode is filled with a-ha moments, and I know it will resonate with so many of you.

Enjoy the episode.

If you've been to 10 doctors and they all say, "There's nothing here.

Everything looks normal.

It looks perfectly fine," then what do you say to your partner? "My doctor thinks I'm fine, but I just can't have sex with you." Like, that's really, really difficult to say, so then they usually don't tell their partner.

And we have studies from Sweden, for instance, showing that about 70% of women never tell their partner.

[gentle music]

Could the way your partner responds to your pain, their words, their attitude, their actions in the moment, actually shape the pain itself? And what do ideals of masculinity have to do with why some partners respond in ways that quietly make it worse? My guest today is Linn Myhrfält Stenström, a clinical psychologist and researcher at UiT, who has spent her career studying vulvodynia in relationships.

We get into all of it, the criticism her work attracted when it f- went public, what happens to a couple when they have no name for what's wrong, the three ways partners respond to pain, and why even the loving ones can backfire, and the conflicting ideals of masculinity sitting underneath it all.

What I appreciated most is that Linn, a psychologist herself, is the first to name what psychology can and can't explain, and why the moment we call women's pain psychological, we stop looking for the biomedical answers that are actually there.

This episode is filled with a-ha moments, and I know it will resonate with so many of you.

Enjoy the episode.