When Pain Comes Into Play

Technology has come a long way to ease our physical and emotional pain, but no remedy is flawless. Unfortunately, the perfect cure for chronic pain has not reached us yet. Chronic conditions, as well as medications easing their symptoms can affect desire and sexual function, thus preventing partners from being physically intimate with each other in the traditional sense.

Fulfilling Your Desire

Sexual activity can play a great role in your quality of life, but having fulfilling sexual experiences can be difficult when the body does not seem to follow the mind. Physical barriers can bring emotional obstacles along when limited mobility prevents you from being intimate with a lover the way you would like to be. It can be devastating for sexual fantasies to flourish while the body is unable to keep up.

However, it does not mean all possibility of intimacy between willing partners is impossible. Of course, there are many options for people struggling with traditional sexuality to fulfill their sexual desire. While assuring disability access needs are understood and respected, partners can take care of one another. 

Beyond Touch

Partners may be afraid that a lack of physical intimacy, or a change in their traditional sexuality, may limit their connection, but simple gestures can carry a lot of attention. Significant others can access different types of intimacy often overlooked between lovers with time, experiment, and support. 

Remember that navigating alternate ways to be intimate with yourself or a partner is a learning curve. While expanding your vision of intimacy outside of the limits of physicality, you can learn to enjoy and trust your body and your partner in brand new ways. 

A Few Ideas

Sex toys and fantasy can stimulate your body and your mind in ways they may not usually be. Finding areas of the body to eroticize other than genitals, such as the neck or the ears, when contact with the lower body area is not possible, can bring on the satisfaction of a partner’s touch without much of the pain. When even a slight touch of a partner can exacerbate chronic pain, visual stimulation can be prioritized. Watching your partner play with themself can be very stimulating and exciting. Dirty talk and loving words can also be an alternative method to convey intimacy without the use of touch. 

The options are endless. Because the aim of sexuality is solely to create bonds between participating partners, there are  many effective and valid ways to enjoy those bonds as there are people enjoying them. Your ability to be sexually active may not be exactly what you envisioned, but it does not mean the alternative is less fulfilling. 

You can learn to see your desires as natural and inherent parts of yourself that need to be explored; sexuality is far from being restrained to reproductive organs. Hence, you must only find what works best for you and your partner.