Faithfully and Easter Joy have made some excellent points.
Child of God, if you want a little more anonymous help with things, lubricants can help. If you are embarassed to buy KY jelly or similar, get a jar of coconut oil. It has a pleasant smell, can be a moisturizer for skin and hair, is IMO more effective than specifically marketed lubricants, and is a natural option. Be generous with the application for intimate uses. Best of luck and love.
Yes. Keep in mind that commercial lubricants are water-based so that they won’t harm condoms. If you are not using condoms, you have many more options.
Do try a bit of anything you want to use as a lubricant on a sensitive tissue other than the most sensitive ones before you try to use it on your genitals, and try a little on the genitals outside any activity before trying it with an activity. You don’t want to find out too late and the hard way that coconut oil doesn’t agree with your skin.
Also, OP, realize that if you are using NFP to avoid pregnancy because you have no financial means to provide for a child yet, you are also choosing the “driest” time of your cycle. If you are not using NFP at all and do plan to have a child right away, you might consider learning it, as it will help you identify the fertile time, which is also the time when your body (including your brain) is physically most receptive to intercourse. Even so, in your case it is appropriate for foreplay to be spread out over a
very long time–I mean stealing away for some hugging and kissing and then waiting for a bit before going any further over the course of a whole day, a whole weekend, or even longer, if necessary-- because the lubrication that God put into your body even during infertile times typically requires far more relaxation and patience when you are anxious than when you are not.
If you need this in order to overcome your anxiety,* that is morally OK*. It is OK to interrupt your intention to engage in the marital act if pain or anxiety prevents you from continuing or if this is what your body needs in order to be receptive. Be very patient with yourselves. You need to train your body to believe that your husband will never hurt you. That may allow you to relax enough so that your body (your mind doesn’t do this directly!!) will allow intercouse to take place. Your husband needs to understand this, too, so he won’t give your body the wrong signals. Once that happens, you can’t change what your body will do by mere willpower coming from your mind.
You may also want to try visualization exercises, in which you see yourself having sex with your husband and you reflect on how pleased the Holy Spirit is when you give yourself totally to your husband and he gives himself to you. Visualize the *delight *of God, because this is how God desires to bring children into the world! IOW, don’t just
tell yourself “I know this is a good thing” in an intellectual way, but let yourself
feel the delight of God over his creation of sex. Read the Song of Songs, and reflect on how God expressed his own love in the image of the love of a man and a woman. If you practice feeling God’s delight in marriage and in sex between husband and wife, it may help you a great deal when the giving time comes.
These are things you and your husband could try by yourselves, but again: You’d do the best to get some professional help. At least promise each other that you will not force anything on your body. Every time you teach your body to fear that sex could hurt you or upset your husband with you, that is something you will have to “untrain” away later.
