Real Talk: I'm Allergic to Condoms

I was a virgin up until my current boyfriend. I always thought I wanted to wait until marriage, but with my boyfriend, things just felt right. There was no pressure from him or anyone else, and it just felt right.

Our first time was great—he was gentle and patient with me, and he didn’t try to move too quickly. Everything was perfect up until he switched the brand on condoms we were using about a month after we first started having sex.

That was fine by me since I wanted him to be comfortable, too. These new condoms he bought had spermicide in them. After we had sex with those condoms, I knew something was off. I went to the bathroom and there was a slight burning feeling, but I shrugged it off, not really thinking too much about it.

Over the course of the next few days, my body didn’t feel right. I had a frequent urgency to pee all the time, but when I tried to, I couldn’t. When I was finally able to pee, I felt the burning sensation again. At first, I thought it was a urinary tract infection, but then the symptoms went away, so I figured it was nothing.

This was a repetitive cycle. We’d have sex, I’d get the symptoms, they would go away, up until we had sex again. At that point, I took a UTI test, which came up negative, so I wasn’t sure what was wrong.

I’d mentioned my issues to a close friend, who responded that it might be an allergic reaction to the condoms we were using. After doing a lot of research on symptoms of condom allergies, I was convinced that I was actually allergic to the spermicide in the condoms we were using. Upon mentioning this to my boyfriend, we switched condoms right away to ones without spermicide, and in an instant, my body felt much better.

Most people assume that having a condom allergy is being allergic to the latex, but this isn’t always the case. I didn’t even know I could be allergic to spermicide until it happened to me!

-Anonymous