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Sexual Health Patient Advocate Sue Goldstein shares why it is important to include your partner when you undergo a sexual health evaluation.
Sue Goldstein:
It’s so important to include your partner when you are having a sexual health evaluation.
Maybe he or she can’t physically go with you and it’s just a discussion at home, or maybe your partner can go.
But for women, for instance if you are feeling pain every time you have intercourse and now the doctor can show you the areas of your body that are actually inflamed and need to be treated.
If your partner can see those then he or she will actually have an understanding of why intercourse is so painful and perhaps any accusations that you may have gotten in the past will fade away because they’ll understand it’s beyond your control.
For women who are being prescribed hormones there are so many questions about hormones that we all have and your doctor will try to explain why one is good, one isn’t good, why you are being prescribed.
And instead of having to go home and explain it all over again, having a second set of ears there is so helpful. The whole support mechanism, it’s scary going to the doctor when you don’t know what’s going to happen.
It’s particularly scary going to a sexual medicine physician because you know so little about what’s going to happen.
To have your partner there to support you, to hold your hand, to come in the exam room or not, to sit in the consult room or not, but just to be there is so important.
And the other side of the coin is that sexual problems are a couple’s issue. What’s having to you is affecting your partner and what’s happening to your partner is affecting you.
It may be in that conversation with you, the doctor is able to elicit that your partner has problems that are affecting your sexual health and so it becomes a whole picture rather than trying to put one piece of the puzzle into the whole thing.
Let’s get all those pieces out there on the table and having your partner involved whether it’s a conversation at home or coming with you is just so important to your long-term healthcare.
About Sue Goldstein:
Sexual Health Patient Advocate Sue Goldstein serves as program coordinator for San Diego Sexual Medicine, where she coordinates with the Sexual Medicine program at Alvarado Hospital and the University of California at San Diego.
Mrs. Goldstein combines her knowledge of sexual medicine, her writing skills and her years of fund-raising for non-profit organizations in this position to create educational programs for health care clinicians, industry and the public while raising funds to support The Institute for Sexual Medicine, Inc, a charitable corporation dedicated to research and education in the field.
Mrs. Goldstein earned her bachelor's degree in American Civilization from Brown University. She has experience as a lab technician in endocrinology, teacher, musician and technical writer in the field of sexual dysfunction.
View Mrs. Goldstein's Book:
When Sex Isn't Good: Stories & Solutions of Women With Sexual Dysfunction