I saw this statement that one of the sexperts named Heather had replied back to a question, and I was wondering how it could be true the statement was the following:

A woman being a virgin -- if, by that, we mean has not engaged in any kind of vaginal sex before -- doesn't necessarily make any difference in the size of the opening since intercourse/vaginal sex doesn't permanently change the genitals in any way.

The last part is what I don't get, I dont understand, I've had sex roughly 20 times, and I can DEFINALLY see a diffrence from when I was a virgin, my whole genitals have expanded and are loose and there's A LOT of room up in my vagina now, before I could only get a finger if that much. AND also there are claims that people who've had alot of sex are more loose, compared to people who haven't had as much sex are more tight. So, to me this statement is VERY confusing cause to me it is very untrue considering my whole downstairs is permently changed. Please Help!

Hey there Carmen; Heather here. Thought I'd help clear up your confusion.

There are a lot of different reasons for what you're observing, but for the most part, none of them have to do with intercourse -- or a penis -- causing noticeable permanent changes to your anatomy. It might make more sense if you understood more about the vulva and the vagina.

So, let's start by making sure we're on the same page: have a look at this article here, so that you're sure to understand the terms I'm using so that you don't wind up more confused instead of less: Pink Parts - Female Sexual Anatomy. So, when I say vagina, you'll know I mean your internal anatomy -- the part you can feel when you slide a finger inside -- and when I say vulva, or other parts of the vulva, you'll know I'm talking about your external genitals, the bits you can see.

It's a muscle, not just skin.

The vagina -- the muscular tube inside the vaginal opening, where you can stick a finger or a tampon, or where, if you're having vaginal intercourse with a male partner, his penis would go -- is a muscle. It's not just skin, like on your face, or fatty tissue, like your outer labia. And it's a strong muscle at that: in fact, you can feel that it's a muscle because after you urinate, when you squeeze those last couple of crops out, that movement utilizes those muscles. They can also often be felt during an orgasm. Like any other muscle, unless we lose tone in it -- and intercourse can't cause that to happen, especially given that we're usually exercising that muscle during intercourse -- movement against it or on it isn't going to change it. We chew food every single day, and that makes the muscles of our mouths stronger, not weaker.

The vagina sits flat and closed when nothing is inside.

When nothing is inside the vagina, the walls of that muscular tube sit flat right on each other, or closed, like your mouth would when your lips were closed if you didn't have bones and teeth ot keep it open in there. The vagina doesn't stay open -- if it feels like they do because you're sticking a finger inside, know they ONLY do BECAUSE there is a finger inside. When you take that finger out, they collapse flat again. The vagina expands to fit whatever is put inside it, and clamps down to some degree to hold what is inside it. If it didn't we'd all have genital infections every single day. And women who use tampons, for instance, would have tampons just falling right out on the3 floor when we were walking around! Women who had given childbirth -- after all an infants head is far larger than any penis in existence -- couldn't use tampons at all.

And women who have given birth certainly can use tampons, and they don't fall out of women's vaginas, nor are they sold in sizes the way something would be when something comes in all different static sizes (and if you look at tampon ranges, you'll notice that the difference in size from the lightest flow to the heaviest is really very minor: there isn't a single tampon out there the size of the average penis). The different sizes of tampons are for different amounts of menstrual flow: again, that's because the only static "size" of the vagina is closed, and it's size changes, depending on what is in side it, in part. if different women's vaginas came in different sizes, we'd have small, medium, large, and extra large tampons just like we have for clothes, and the difference between a small tampon and an extra large would look as profound as the difference between a size 0 pair of jeans and a size 22. Not the case.

(Same goes with menstrual cups: those are held in place by the vaginal walls, inside the vagina, but come in only two sizes: for women who have had a vaginal birth, and those who haven't. But it's a good way to see how little difference even that makes, because the difference between the smaller width and the larger is only a mere half of a centimeter: pull out a ruler and you'll see how small that is. If a personal anecdote helps, the first time I got a diaphragm was in 1988, when I was 18 years old, and had had a lot of kinds of sex before then, but not a whole lot of heterosexual intercourse. Almost twenty years (during which I've been very sexually active, very often, including intercourse as well as vaginal fisting a few times, no less) later, I still use diaphragms, and lo and behold, I only wear one size larger than I did then -- a mere 5 millimeter difference -- and that change is most likely due to my having had an abortion, not intercourse, though it is typical for women to go up one size like that - again, a diference of mere milimeters -- if they started using one before intercourse and then had intercourse.)

Certainly, if a woman wants to start using tampons, it's generally advised she use the smallest absorbency at first: but that's not because someone using it for the first time is presumed to be a virgin, or must have a smaller vagina. It's because it's both best for your health to use the least absorbent tampon you need, and generally most comfortable for women to start with the smallest size of something going into the vagina until they get used to it, just like for a lot of women, if you're going to engage in manual sex, it often feels best to start with one finger and work up to more.

But you'll notice that that's often the case: even when you've had manual sex with fingers inserted a hundred times, it STILL often feels better to start with just a finger before working up to more. (Not always: sometimes we're just so aroused that starting bigger feels fine and dandy, but often, gradual buildup to larger things feels best for most women, of all ages and sexual histories.)

How we feel influences the size of our vaginas at any given moment

One reason for that is because if we're nervous about something, if we're not relaxed, and if we're not sexually aroused -- something which usually happens gradually -- our vaginas have not -- at THAT moment, not forever and ever -- expanded enough because of feeling okay and relaxed and aroused, for more than one finger to be comfortable. And with all kinds of sex, once we feel more comfortable with certain activities, and less fearful of them, it can get easier and easier over time to get more relaxed and more aroused about it more quickly.

So, it's normal for someone who has never had sex to have a vagina or vaginal opening that feel "tight," but not because that tightness is a permanent state sex will change over time physically. Rather, because most people are really nervous about sex the first few times, not all that aroused, and so their bodies act in kind: the vagina doesn't loosen more easily the way it will if we become more accustomed to the idea and less fearful.

Those claims that people who have had more sex are "looser" are based in a LOT of ignorance, a lot of it coming from people who just don't understand that when someone's vagina feels very tight -- and that can happen with women my age who have had sex hundreds upon hundreds of times for decades -- it's about them being nervous, fearful or not sexually aroused at that moment. If, an hour later, they felt better about things and GOT fully aroused, that very same vagina that felt so tight an hour nefore would feel much less so that hour later. That myth also has a lot to do with men deciding it's better for women to be "tight," when, in fact, for women it's usually very uncomfortable and not better at all. In fact, it tends to be painful for women.

Also, when a woman gets more sexually aroused, the back of the vagina does what is called "tenting." That means the cervix pulls back, and kind of like a balloon when you blow it up, more room is made in the vagina -- otherwise, an average size penis wouldn't fit inside, and trying to make it fit would hurt. But that too, isn't permanent: when a woman is no longer aroused, the vagina goes back to it's usual size, which, on average, for ALL women is only a few inches when unaroused.

Other changes you might be noting to the parts of your vulva you can see: like your clitoral hood, vaginal opening and inner labia are likely just due to changes that happen to your vulva as you finish developing in your teens. You may also have had a partial hymen before you began having intercourse: when you have some of the hymen still intact, it causes the vaginal opening to look smaller, but when it wears away, you can see it more clearly. yet still, the vaginal opening itself hasn't actually changed, just that tissue that obscures it. (And the hymen gradually wears away over time due to many things, including plain old hormones in your own body, not just because of vaginal sex.) As well, as you get older and older, age alone will cause some vaginal and vulval changes, because our muscle tone changes as we age, our homrones change, and if, in addition, you do ever become pregnant and have a vaginal birth, thatis really the one things can cause some permanent changes, but even then, in most women, those changes are very minor once some time has passed after delivery.

I hope that clears things up for you. In case you're still confused, your sexual healthcare provider and/or gynecologist is a great person to ask about this. Since you've had sex 20 times or so, if you have not started getting that yearly sexual healthcare, it's way past time to do that, so do hop on it. Not only can you be sure to take care of your health best that way, it's also the perfect place to get a second opinion on questions like this.