Sex Q&A: Learn to Love Your Body This Bikini Season
To get ready for bikini season, it might be more about getting your mind right than your body.
BY DR. TRINA READ

DepositPhotos Being comfortable in a bikini might have more to do with how you think than how you look. “ Our body image doesn’t change when we change our body, our body image changes when we take the time to practice falling in love with it.”

Sex and relationship expert, Dr. Trina Read, is ready to answer your questions.

It’s bikini season and I’m really self-conscious about my body. What can I do to start liking my body?

It’s one thing to say we want to love our bodies and another to put a plan into action. For change to happen, you need to experience feeling different.

Here’s my three step plan to body-loving success:

Look: Find a mirror that is at least five feet tall and stand naked (yes, completely butt naked) in front of that mirror. Systematically, starting at the top of your head and going through to the bottom of your feet, say what you like and do not like about your body.

Touch: Find a part(s) of your body that you usually treat poorly or talk harshly to and take some time to massage it. Notice the softness of the skin in your hands; notice the subtleties of the texture.

Voice: Imagine this hated body part can speak for itself and can tell you how tired it is of being treated poorly, of being told that they are "too this" or "not enough that." Put your hands on each part of your body that you have been mean to and let it tell you how they’d actually like to be looked at and treated.

Great Sex Tip: Our body image doesn’t change when we change our body, our body image changes when we take the time to practice falling in love with it.

I’m a virgin a month after my wedding. I was told sex would hurt and tear and I would bleed all over. When my husband stimulates me I get very sore. I want to be a wife and don’t know how to deal with this.

Here are four ideas that might help you figure this out.

1. Can you rule out an infection or irritation?
Your doctor can check for cystitis (honeymooner’s irritation) caused by frequent sexual activity. The tip off: there is pain when urinating. Or your husband might be using too much pressure or the wrong angle for manual stimulation.

2. Is it Vulvodynia?
That is intense painful areas that feel like hot spots on your genitals. If so that may be causing your body to react with a protective response and not allowing penetration.

3. Who told you it was going to hurt?
If you think something is going to hurt, guess what? It will. Not to say the first time it isn’t uncomfortable but that "painful" is not typical. Use a water-based lubricant to ease the penetration.

4. Have you used tampons?
There is a difference between the capacity of a vagina to accept a small tampon when not stimulated (which feels uncomfortable upon insertion); and the body’s ability to accept a penis when sexually stimulated.

When sexually stimulated the vaginal walls engorges with blood and starts lubricating internally to facilitate penetration.

Great Sex Tip: Remember, babies come into this world through the vagina. Your vagina has remarkable capacities.

Dr. Trina Read is the founder of VivaXO.com; a leading relationship and sexual health expert and educator; and is a best selling author, media expert, syndicated blogger, international speaker, magazine columnist, and spokeswoman. Trina has just launched Sensual Tastes Events, an interactive workshop blending the pleasures of food and sex education. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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