sex sucks - wtf?

I'm starting to have sex at 35.

People talk about how it's painful the first time, but they don't talk about how it's painful the first few times, and they definitely don't go into why or how it's painful. 

Based on what I heard, it just sound like a whole bunch of vaginal canal pain. If you're going slow and using a lot of lube, you'll feel more pressure, with some slight pains from being newly stretched. But after that, comes the abdominal pain and cramps afterwards. The abdominal pains and cramps can also trigger other digestive issues.

I only have heating pads that double as ice packs, and those heating pads that doubles ice packs don't last long enough. Heating pads are extremely helpful, though! They were much better than nothing! 

I want us to have this connection, so I don't regret it at all. I'm just saying, this is really rough and I had no information to prepare me for this. In hindsight, a lot of the information that I had was for people already having sex. There's not a whole lot of information to normalize talking about what happens your first time or your first few times.