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Topics: News, US News, Health, Sex and Relationships
Kit Roberts
Topics: News, US News, Health, Sex and Relationships
A woman has revealed that she is 'terrified' of sex with her boyfriend for a very particular reason.
Allison Tennyson, 34, revealed that she has an allergy which rather puts a dampener on things in the bedroom.
That's because Allison, from Minneapolis in Minnesota, is allergic to semen and flares up in a rash upon contact.
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She can find sex very painful due to her allergy, and she's worried that means having children could potentially be out of the question.
Alison and her partner can't even use condoms to protect her as she's also allergic to the material that condoms are made from.
The pain has resulted in the pair's sex life grinding to a halt, as it's very painful for Allison and her boyfriend understandably doesn't want to cause her pain.
She said: “It hurts. My partner doesn’t want it. It’s not appealing to be hurting your partner during sex!"
Adding: “We’re not intimate enough because of the allergies. I don’t want to burn, and he doesn’t want to make me cry – so it’s really hard!
"It’s a struggle… It’s hard to be intimate because it’s not comfortable and I can’t even use condoms.”
Allison has a condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which is a connective tissue disorder that affects the skin and the organs, as well as having a blood clotting disorder.
She was tested for some 160 allergens, with only a few of them coming back positive.
An allergy to semen, where someone is allergic to the proteins found in sperm, is a rare condition - with it affecting up to 40,000 women in the US.
This causes burning sensations, which Allison first had around ten years ago.
She described how her allergy has been very difficult for her, saying: “It’s really upsetting… I’ve cried about it quite a bit to be honest.
"It makes me upset as I didn’t even know that it was a thing that could happen because I’d never heard about it before."
While the pair do still have sex, Allison said that her allergy was very 'limiting'.
She said: “I always want to have sex so we do it, but only in the early stages. Not experiencing the semen is just not the same and so limiting."
The condition also could render having a child very difficult.
Allison said: "I don’t know how I can even have a baby; I don’t even know how that would work – like would my body just reject semen completely?"
Nonetheless, she and her partner are still considering the possibility.
She said: “We’ve considered it, we just don’t know yet. I’ve always wanted one but then it’d be fine to not have a baby – we keep going back and forth.
“If having a baby wasn’t an option, it would be pretty heartbreaking.
"At least If I had the choice, it would make me feel better."