Painful sex can be caused by many things. You may have an injury, an infection, or a growth in your vagina. Or maybe you have muscle spasms. In some cases, the pain is caused by another medical condition, such as a spinal problem.
Some medicines can cause dryness in the vagina. And as a woman gets older, her vagina gets drier. It may also narrow, shorten, and get stiffer. This dryness can make sex painful.