During the time the Kellers wrote “The Meaning for Marriage,” vaginismus wasn’t necessarily something they would have thought of, since it is a condition that hasn’t been studied until recently. Bryana encouraged those who write marriage books to address the condition, which some of their readers will suffer from.
“I must admit,” Bryana said, “sometimes I am full of anger over the fact that generations of women have suffered what I suffered with NO support, NO acknowledgement in the medical community, and NO name for what they were experiencing. What happened to those women weighs on me every day. Many of them were abandoned by their partners (this STILL happens to women with vaginismus a lot) or forced themselves through years of agony in order to fulfill what church leaders told them was ‘their duty.’ It’s just so very unacceptable that we did this to women.”
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Gregoire agreed, saying, “I endured so much! The counsellors I saw at the time were more concerned with how Keith was coping than with how I was coping. It was devastating and compounded the pain. That’s one of the things that motivates our research!”
ChurchLeaders reached out to Bryana Joy and Sheila Wray Gregorie for comment and will update this article in the event of their reply.
