Why Melbourne mum was forced into celibacy

For the last four-and-a-half years, even watching a couple kiss on TV can cause Wynona to experience excruciating vaginal pain.

It’s a topic Wynona Fenech never thought she’d speak about publicly, let alone in an interview set to air on tonight’s episode of Insight on SBS.

“There’s always that apprehension because your face is on TV, you’re talking about your vagina and the fact that you can’t have sex with your husband,” she told news.com.au.

“People were like, do you really want to talk about this stuff on TV? You know what, I don’t really but nobody else is going to so I have to.”

For the past four years and counting the 28-year-old Melbourne HR manager and her husband have struggled to kiss, let alone have sex due to her endometriosis and resulting trauma she suffered due to the pain.

Despite her happy marriage, Wynona Fenech has been unable to have sex for four and a half years due to her endometriosis pain and resulting trauma. Picture: Supplied.

It means that Wynona and her husband Stefan Fenech have been forced into a celibate relationship, with the pair unsure of what intimacy will look like in the future for them.

Like the other women in her family Wynona had grown up with painful periods but it only when she was rushed to hospital aged 17 with excruciating pain on her right side that she was diagnosed with endometriosis.

But it was when she was pregnant with her daughter in 2017 that her symptoms changed drastically.

Sex become unbearably painful, with the walls of Wynona’s vagina feeling like they were on fire and her pelvic area cramping.

The pain first began when Wynona was pregnant with daughter Isla in 2017. Picture: Supplied.

“We couldn’t have sexual intercourse because it was painful, but we also couldn’t kiss, I couldn’t hold my husband’s hand,” she said.

“I couldn’t be turned on because even just the motion of being turned on, the aching, it would literally feel like my vulva is on fire.”

The couple stopped having sex, with Wynona putting down the pain possibly down to being pregnant.

Even feeling slightly aroused would bring on the excruciating pain and cause Wynona to have diarrhoea.

“Literally like on a rom com if someone does a peck,” Wynona said. “It’s not because I’m overly horny, it was just so sensitive that any kind of minute arousal was just so painful.

After the traumatic C-section birth of daughter Isla in June that year things only got worse, with Wynona’s vagina becoming so closed off she “couldn’t even get a Q-tip in without it hurting”.

She was diagnosed with vaginismus, an involuntary tensing of the vaginal canal which prevents penetration.

After a traumatic birth, Wynona was also diagnosed with vaginismus. Picture: Supplied.

Wynona’s endometriosis symptoms also came back soon after and she faced periods so heavy, they were “embarrassing”.

As Wynona’s vagina was so closed off, she wasn’t able to work with dilators to try and relax the area and doctors instead recommended she get plastic surgery which would make her vaginal opening wider.

“We did agree to have plastic surgery as the last resort, because we really did try everything,” she said.

Wynona got the surgery and a laparoscopy done at the same time, which saw her diagnosed with stage four endometriosis.

But unfortunately the surgery on her vagina has not enabled her to have sex, with Wynona now fearing her chances of getting intimate with her husband face a “mental barrier”.

“The route that we were supposed to take was this plastic surgery but it also didn’t help, because it didn’t address the fact that there’s all this mental and psychological trauma that you have after going through so much pain,” she said.

Surgery and other therapies have been unable to help Wynona and Stefan have sex, so they are intimate in other ways. Picture: Supplied.

Wynona said she’s had countless bad experiences with health professionals – including a gynaecologist who asked if it was “all in my head” – and does not feel able to get help for the issue.

But she still feels “really lucky” as her husband Stefan has supported her throughout her problems with pain and sex.

“I have a wonderful husband who has literally shown no issues towards us not having sex,” Wynona said.

“We’ve had to be intimate in other ways, so we do everything together. Usually when we go to work together we catch the train together, we can the train home.”

Wynona hopes that by sharing her story, other women with endometriosis who go through similar experiences with sex will know they aren’t alone or “weird”.

“No-one is up in arms about this, and we need to be,” she said.

You can hear more from Wynona and others about Celibacy tonight on SBS Insight at 8.30pm.

Originally published as Why Melbourne mum was forced into celibacy