The aim of our study was to understand how male partners of women diagnosed with fibromyalgia syndrome perceive sexuality. Gadamerian hermeneutic phenomenology and the Roy Adaptation Model provided the overall framework for this research study. Eighteen participants were recruited through convenience and purposive sampling.
Data collection was conducted between February and July of and included a focus group and twelve in-depth interviews. Enhancing intimacy, skin-to-skin contact during acute FMS outbreaks , finding new positions, non-coital sex and use of sex toys can increase female desire and help coping. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Fibromyalgia syndrome FMS is a non-joint rheumatic syndrome that presents patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain and painful points sensitive to body pressure [ 1 , 2 ].
Fibromyalgia syndrome includes fatigue and muscle pain, difficulty sleeping and stiffness upon awakening [ 3 , 4 ]. Fibromyalgia syndrome is associated with psychiatric comorbidity such as depression, anxiety, emotional stress and coping problems [ 5 — 8 ].
Fibromyalgia syndrome is a chronic musculoskeletal disease which affects physical, mental and sexual health [ 9 ], FMS affects 2. The criteria to diagnose fibromyalgia is to have suffered generalised pain for at least 3 months as well as pain on digital palpation in 11 out of 18 tender point sites [ 13 , 14 ].
