If you’ve been dealing with pelvic pain, painful sex, or a sense of tightness or tension in your pelvic floor, you may have come across something called pelvic dilators—maybe from your pelvic floor therapist, a doctor, or just a late-night Google search.

They can look a little intimidating at first. And they kinda look like dildos? Are they dildos? What the h*ll are they?!

There are multiple reasons why someone might experience painful sex. Before getting into what those are, just to be very clear – when I say painful sex, right now I’m referring to pain with insertion during vaginal intercourse. This pain can be deep in the vagina or more at the entrance. Sometimes it can prevent intercourse from happening completely. So why is it painful?

So your doctor says you have a hypertonic pelvic floor…
You may be thinking – “What does that really mean? What am I supposed to do about it? What else has this been impacting that I may not know about?”

Well let’s talk about it.