Urine loss during sex is a form of urinary incontinence. There are two types of urinary incontinence that can cause the loss of urine during sex. These are called stress urinary incontinence and urge urinary incontinence. The cause of urine loss during sex has to do with the pelvic floor muscles. The pelvic floor is too weak or too tense. Stress urinary incontinence is common among weak pelvic floors, urge urinary incontinence is common among tense pelvic floors. The solution for urine loss during sex is the use of suitable pelvic floor exercises. It’s important to exercise and strengthen your pelvic floor when it’s weak, and it’s recommended to exercise on your ability to relax when your pelvic floor is overly tense. The combination of using the pelvic floor exercises and another activity will be ideal for your recovery. Go back to doing sports or take a walk every day.
Loss of urine can happen during a lot of moments. It can be very embarrassing if you were to lose urine during sex. Losing urine during sex indicates that your pelvic area is having some issues. The pelvic floor is dysregulated. Let’s take a look at this topic together. I’ve also collected a handful of solutions for you.
If you’re looking for pelvic floor exercises or go to the exercises page. If you’re looking for products for your pelvis and go to the Pelvic Store.
Two types of urinary incontinence during sex
If you experience urinary loss during sex, it could mean that you have one of the two types of urinary incontinence. These types come from a tense or a weakened pelvic floor.
Having an overly tense or overactive pelvic floor causes urge urinary incontinence.
Having a weakened pelvic floor causes stress urinary incontinence.
I will discuss both types of urinary incontinence in this article so you can discover which type you have and what you can do to help your loss of urine during sex. First we will clear up some things for you, so you can get a good idea of the cause of your pelvic issues.
How the pelvis and the pelvic floor operate
Sex is intimate and can be pleasant. We often don’t realize that a lot has to go right if you want to have pleasurable sex. The area you’re going to be busy with is very complex. The pelvis and the pelvic floor are area where a lot of crucial organs are located. The pelvis protects the bones, the intestines, bladder and the uterus. These crucial pelvic organs have another important connection to the pelvis: the connection with the pelvic floor muscles. The pelvic floor muscles is a group of muscles that are located at the bottom of the pelvic area as a kind of hammock that holds your organs. The pelvic floor muscles aren’t like your ordinary muscles. The pelvic floor muscles have openings: the urethra, vagina and the rectum have their own exit. These exits are closed by the pelvic floor muscles. This often happens subconsciously.
Common causes of pelvic issues
It can become the case that the pelvic floor muscles will experience having issues with functioning. This can be caused by a few factors:
- Age and thereby the weakening of the pelvic floor muscles.
- Prolonged obesity or being overweight which causes your pelvic floor muscles to be overloaded. The weight will press on the pelvic floor.
- A vaginal childbirth. This childbirth has a huge impact and severely stretches out the pelvic floor muscles. You also have the possibility of damaging the pelvic floor muscles which causes you to have a longer recovery from giving birth.
- An organic prolapse can have influences on your pelvic floor muscles, for example a prolapse of the uterus.
- Mental factors can come to be as well. Maybe you’ve gone through (sexual) trauma near your pelvic area which causes you to have trouble with relaxing.
- A surgery can affect or weaken the pelvic floor muscles, for example a bladder or uterus surgery.
- The pelvic floor can have become overloaded by having a heavy duty job that requires a lot of lifting, for example. This can cause your pelvic floor to be overactive and tense.
As mentioned before, you can divide loss of urine under stress or urge urinary incontinence. With stress we mean a weakened pelvic floor, with urge we mean an overactive pelvic floor. Let’s go through them both so you can decide which type of urinary incontinence you’re experiencing during sex or during your daily life.
Sex with stress urinary incontinence
You will most likely have stress urinary incontinence if you lose urine during sex. Having stress urinary incontinence means that your pelvic floor muscles have been affected or weakened, because of age or childbirth, for example. You have less control over your pelvic floor muscles. These muscles aren’t able to properly close off the urethra anymore. Movements that puts any pressure on your pelvic floor can cause you to lose some urine. This has to do with abdominal pressure. The more abdominal pressure, the more tension on your pelvic floor muscles. Think of laughing loudly, pushing, coughing or sneezing. But actions like standing up or jogging can also increase the abdominal pressure. Your pelvic floor can’t catch this pressure anymore, which causes urine to escape.
You can compare this situation with a tube of mayonnaise. Nothing will come out when you screw off the cap. But when you squeeze or press on it, there will. This is the same thing for your body and the pelvic area.
Hopefully you are able to relax during sex so you can make a fun time out of it. However, it’s still possible for the abdominal pressure to increase. A thrust or especially an orgasm can cause urine to escape. I can imagine this is annoying. Talk about it with your partner. You can’t help it at the moment! Though, we can still get to work with it together.
2 tips for losing urine during sex caused by stress urinary incontinence:
- Abdominal pressure is incredibly important, so try to keep that low. You can do this by not holding your breath but by continuing to breathe through the stomach instead. When you stop breathing, your abdominal pressure will immediately increase.
- Take control. Partake in positions that are pleasant to you. Get on top, for example. That way you will control the intensity. You can also take a look at my article for sex positions for pelvic instability.
This is how you can solve stress urinary incontinence
Stress urinary incontinence is easily solved. The case is that your pelvic floor muscles have been weakened. This means that you can also strengthen said pelvic floor muscles again. It’s important for you to start with several strengthening pelvic floor exercises which I’ve already prepared for you. It’s easy to perform these exercises, but don’t think your weakened pelvic floor is cured fast. Creating a healthy pelvic floor can take about 3 months with the right pelvic floor exercises. After that it’s important that you maintain your healthy pelvic floor. Sex toys can also help strengthen your pelvic floor. Think of vaginal balls or bullets. If you insert them, you can actively feel whenever you tense up or relax your pelvic floor. Try it out and have a read through my article about sex toys and pelvic issues. Training your pelvic floor requires focus and determination but it’s not for nothing, plus you can solve this by yourself! Go for it because you too can solve stress urinary incontinence.
Sex with urge urinary incontinence
Your pelvic floor muscles are overactive when you deal with urge urinary incontinence. The muscles are too tense and aren’t able to relax by themselves. You will experience having trouble with going to the toilet, and you’ll have to adjust your toilet habits. Overloaded pelvic floor muscles get caused by a prolonged tension on the pelvic floor. This tension can be caused by being overweight, having or having had a physically heavy job that required a lot of lifting, experiencing pressure or stress around your vagina or during sex, excessive or chronic coughing, or having experienced trauma (like SA). These causes put an immense tension on the pelvic floor. There is also the possibility that you aren’t looking forward to having sex or that you put yourself under a lot of pressure. This causes the pelvic floor muscles to carry a prolonged tension which in terms causes them to be overloaded.
Urge urinary incontinence means that you can’t empty the bladder properly. You can feel urges, but nothing will happen. You will notice the inability to relax. Your bladder won’t get emptied and a lot of urine stays behind in the bladder. There is a possibility that the bladder will overflow when the abdominal pressure will increase. Just a little bit of pressure is needed for a full bladder to lose some urine.
Think back about the tube of mayonnaise, but now the tube is filled to the brim. Of course the tube doesn’t have a cap in this scenario either, because we don’t have a cap either. The tube is overfilled. If you squeeze in it, something will immediately shoot out. Maybe some mayonnaise has already escaped the moment you screwed off the cap. The tube is that filled that something will escape the moment a little bit of pressure gets applied to it. That’s exactly what happens with you when you’re losing urine during sex because of urge urinary incontinence.
2 tips for losing urine during sex because of urge urinary incontinence:
- Try to empty your bladder before you have sex. Relax and have a read through my tips for toilet habits and the relaxing exercises. You will notice that it can be trained.
- Don’t let the abdominal pressure run high. Keep breathing, preferably through your stomach. Don’t stop breathing, especially when you orgasm.
This is how you can solve urge urinary incontinence
You will experience a lot of urges to pee when you have urge urinary incontinence. It’s important for you to learn how to relax, how to properly empty the bladder, and how to take your time for it. Relaxing is the main goal for your recovery, and that recovery can take a while. It’s especially important that you will regain the control over your pelvic floor muscles. Get to know them, teach them how to relax, and learn how to use them. You will notice that you have the reins back in your hands. Sex toys like vaginal balls or bullets can also help you when you’re experience loss of urine during sex. You can actively feel when you can relax or when you’re too tense when you insert one of those sex toys. Go for it, because recovery truly is possible. Your pelvic floor consists out of muscles, and you can go several ways with these muscles!
Some personal recommendations for a weak pelvic floor
I hope you’ll be able to immediately do something with the information you’ve found. If you’re still looking for some more help, then keep on reading. Below I will sum up some products that are suitable to help you strengthen your pelvic floor:
- Strength building pelvic floor exercises: These strength building exercises are specially put together for you so you can train and strengthen your pelvic floor. This is a training module with a lot of different pelvic floor exercises that become more challenging as the periods pass by. Like this you will make sure that you will have a very strong pelvic floor and you solve/prevent your pelvic issues, pelvic pain and other pelvic problems. Click here to directly go to the pelvic floor exercises.
- Vaginal/anal exercising cones: The vaginal or anal exercising cones (also called vaginal balls or Ben Wa balls) are suitable to combine with the strength building pelvic floor exercises from recommendation 1. The vaginal cones differ in weight. Depending on your recovery rate and progress, you can change up the weights. The pelvic floor exercises remain challenging that way so you can keep on working on having a strong pelvic floor. Click here for the overview of vaginal and anal exercising cones that I can recommend to you.
And lastly, are you looking for more information?
Hopefully this information was useful to you! If you’re still looking for some more information, feel free to take another look around on the website. It’s filled with in-depth information, tips, a web shop and also exercises. I still have a lot of articles with lots of information about other symptoms and issues. Feel free to click on the blue words to take you straight to the right page.
