Vagina, Loose Vagina or Tight Vagina - How it changes with time?

Vagina is a the tube between the vulva (see the picture) and the cervix. This forms the connection between the womb/uterus that is ‘inside’ a woman’s body and the outside world. This is an opening through which babies exit during birth. Your menstrual blood along with torn inner lining of your uterus exits through this opening during periods. This vagina is also an opening for insertion of penis, fingers, female condoms, sex toys, tampons or menstrual cups.

What is loose vagina?

Loose is a relative term. There is no such thing as ‘loose’ vagina, in the sense, your vagina loosens and tightens depending on your sex life, pregnancy conditions and age. It is like an elastic band that loosens and tightens on it’s own as per the body needs. General myth is that, a woman having sex more times or with multiple partners often has a loose vagina. But this is not completely true. Irrespective of how many times a woman has sex or with how many men, vagina doesn’t remain stretched/loose forever. Once the penetration activities are paused/stopped, the muscles around the vagina starts to contract there by tightening the vagina. The vagina may become slightly looser with age and with child birth but as said, the muscles starts to contract afterwards.

What about a tight vagina? Is having a tight vagina good?

Young women have a tight vagina whereas older women has a loser one. While this is true, having a tight vagina always isn’t really good for you. A “tight” vagina all the time indicates an underlying condition especially when you are having penetrative sex. When a woman is aroused with the intent of having sex, vagina lubricates itself automatically, loosening the muscles around it to allow smoother penetration. If for any reason, these muscles are not loosened, this could make penetrative sex painful and sometimes impossible. Extreme tightness could indicate a condition called ‘Vaginismus’. This is a treatable condition and occurs 1 in 500 women.

Vaginismus is defined as a condition when severe pain is experienced before or during penile penetration or when slipping in a tampon or inserting a speculum during a pelvic exam. If you are experiencing such a condition, you need to contact a good gynaecologist immediately. We will go in detail about this condition in later articles.

How your vagina changes with time?

The two most important factors that affect the elasticity of your vagina are your age and child birth. Frequent sex or more sex doesn’t really matter much. Once paused, vagina will regain it’s tightness.

Child birth and age cause natural loosening of the vagina a little. The more vaginal births, the more loosened the vagina becomes. However, vagina loosens with age irrespective of whether you had children or not. This is due to the weakening of muscles around the vagina that happens to every woman. Especially for women who are near their 40s or over 40s, this will be visible because of the drop in estrogen levels and you enter the perimonopausal stage.

Less estrogen productions means, the vaginal tissues will become: