A woman has revealed how she remained a virgin throughout her marriage due to an intense fear of sex and penises.
While some married couples are now inviting others into their bedroom as part of the bizarre new 'hotwifing' trend, some are still a little more shy.
There are plenty of reasons why people feel they are unable to have sex, with pornography doing a huge amount of damage and, in some cases, resulting in erectile dysfunction for some young men.
But in the case of Alyne Tamir, it was a strict upbringing without any sort of sex and masturbation that led to her issues between the sheets.
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Alyne was raised in a Mormon household that forbids sex outside of wedlock, but was finally introduced to the idea after marrying a man in 2012, after meeting him at a religious university.
When the big occasion came around, things sadly didn't go to plan for Alyne as they were unable to consummate the marriage on their wedding night.
Alyne from Los Angeles, California, US, said: "We weren't able to have sex on our wedding night. I was really stressed and I was scared of it and I was scared of penises.
"We finally tried after I avoided it for hours. I started crying and it was super painful. When religion is so strict, your sexuality is so policed and you're not allowed to masturbate or to think about pleasure your whole life [then] in one night it's like 'okay, have sex now'. I felt like a bad person for having sex even though it was allowed in marriage.
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"I also think subconsciously I knew this wasn't the life for me. We weren't going to use a condom and my subconscious was terrified of having kids and getting stuck in this religion and this life."
Six months on, and the married couple were still at an impasse, with Alyne sadly left feeling 'dead inside' due to their intimacy difficulties.
She added: "We could never figure it out. Nothing could go inside of me and I couldn't even use a tampon. It was so painful and even if you wanted to force it, you couldn't. It was tight shut.
"I felt so bad for him. He got married and couldn't even have sex with his wife, I felt like a horrible wife.
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"I felt like a prisoner but it wasn't his fault. I created a prison and put myself there and had to make someone sexually happy. I was miserable and didn't understand what was happening.
"I went to three different gynaecologists and one of them very briefly at the end of the meeting very casually said it could be vaginismus. That was the first time I'd heard of it."
She explained how the doctors recommended using dilators, but for Alyne, that sounded more traumatising 'like a medical torture device', so she didn't end up going through with it.
"After a certain amount of time we just gave up," she said. "It was a fact that we couldn't have penetrative sex, it was so clear there was no progress and I would cry or bleed.
"I started Googling 'people who can't have sex after marriage' and I found this article about people with super-conservative religions sometimes having this problem.
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"That's when I realised what I thought was actually happening. It was horrible and I was dead inside. Over the years it was slowly killing me as a person.
"I cheated on him with someone else. I didn't have sex with someone else but it was something sexual outside of marriage. I told him and he was obviously horrified and destroyed and broken."
After visiting three different gynaecologists, she was diagnosed with vaginismus, a condition where the muscles of the vagina tighten involuntarily making penetration impossible.
Fortunately, the diagnosis helped out and after a divorce from her husband in 2015, Alyne was finally able to pop her cherry a year later while travelling, having stopped practising Mormonism.
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Although she didn't enjoy her first time at the age of 27, she experienced 'huge relief' when it happened, and it's allowed her to be more open about her condition.
So much so, that now at the age of 35, Alyne has published her first book Dear Alyne: My Years as a Married Virgin as she looks to reduce the stigma and shame attached to her struggles.
She concluded: "The only person you need to listen to is yourself. Keep trying but be patient, don't push too hard and try a dilator.
"Some things you're not ready to know yet and your body is protecting you. My body was protecting me from not having children and being stuck in a religion in life.
"Don't just be angry at yourself and don't necessarily feel betrayed by your body. Listen to your intuition.
"My intuition told me 'don't tell someone your background and find someone you don't think will judge you' because I have felt judged my whole life and had so much shame around sexuality'.
"Anyone who's recovered from something, whether it's an eating disorder, an abusive marriage or vaginismus, if you're comfortable sharing your story I think it's so great.
"It removes the shame and the stigma and someone else might hear about it and it might change their whole life and be seen at least and in the best scenario be healed."
Topics: Health
James Moorhouse