Lube can be our best friend. Use it, reapply it and use it again. (In fact, please use lube and not your spit). But not all lube is created equal. Turns out you shouldn’t put cherry blasted flavoring up your hoo-hah. Lube shouldn’t get hot and cold. Sounds fun at first, but did you know it can significantly irritate your tissue and increase risk of infection? Not so fun. Even some seemingly normal ones that you see in your local pharmacy store might look normal at first glance, but at second glance, they can be just as problematic.

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?