Mary Bullard

We didn't get real specific in asking people about the nature of the pain, but rather had it ever happened or not.

This was more of an exploratory study.

There's been a lot of research on pain during sexuality, but typically with clinical samples,

People who have some sort of diagnosed medical or physical issue that might cause them fairly chronic pain during sex, that's not what we were interested in.

We were interested in just everyday, occasional forms of pain.

And so we got our participants to explain why they thought people might feel pain without having them tell us specifically about their pain.

But we found out a lot from doing that.

There are quite a few participants who were concerned about their partner's reaction, but they were also concerned about how it might make them feel that they were not good sexual partners or they were not real women or that sort of concern.

And with regard to the men feeling the pain and not speaking up, a lot of them were concerned it would make them seem like less of a man.

So gender roles were definitely playing a role.

Definitely.

Yeah.

So women are twice as likely to tell their partners about pain as men are.

And they're four times as likely during penile vaginal intercourse to stop the proceedings and try to change something.

Women are often told that pain is just part of being a woman in all realms of life.

And there is the false expectation that the first time a woman has sex is always going to be painful.

And then that seems to just sort of carry over into subsequent sex acts where people don't even think about the possibility of men experiencing pain.

But our research suggests that they do.

I mean, not nearly as much as women, but absolutely they do.

No, I don't think that's necessarily the case.