First take a deep breath! It can seem like the worst thing ever… but there are specific steps you can take.
With Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com and Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com.
Reid: What do you do when the condom breaks? Coming up now. I’m Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com.
Cathy: I’m Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com.
Reid: What do you do when the condom breaks, Cathy?
Cathy: Initially, there is usually panic because we’re taught that that’s scary.
Reid: That’s the worst.
Cathy: There’s STIs, there’s pregnancy. Oh my God. The best thing to do is take a nice deep breath, and probably stop what you were doing.
Reid: Don’t be like, “Shush. Don’t tell anyone.” No, call time out on the field. Time out. Condom seems to have broken. Please pull genitals out of genitals.
Cathy: Yes. You want to make sure that you’ve gotten all the pieces of the condom. If it’s torn, you don’t want to leave part of it inside your partner. Then, take a deep breath. It’s a great time to talk. If you haven’t ejaculated, it’s unlikely that your partner will be pregnant. Someone has written in saying could she be pregnant. Theoretically, she could be pregnant, but the odds are very low.
That might be something … Depending on what your beliefs are, you can go talk to your doctor about a Plan B or wait and see, but the odds are pretty low. You can decide. Talk to your partner. Look at the statistics online. If you haven’t ejaculated …
Reid: Go to Scarleteen.com and CDC.gov. Those are the 2 places, I’d say, for the least scary, most accurate health information. Because if you just Google pregnancy statistics, you might come up with the wrong study or the wrong site and get some scary information.
My advice is, obviously, if … For those of us who are penis owners, when you notice that the condom breaks, or even when the condom slips off, stop fucking the person and be like, “Okay, little bit of a thing happening.” Report what’s going on like, “Hey, it seems like the condom has broken. Let’s take care of things.”
Try not to panic. Take a breath, as Cathy says. It’s like that situation when the kid falls down and the parents freak out, the kid freaks out. If you can freak out less, it will often help the situation. Same if you’re the vulva owner, or the asshole owner, and you’re the one who notices something is up, go slowly through what’s going on, but in a quick, non-pressured manner.
Condom broke, what’s going on? Is the condom inside? Is there ejaculate inside the condom? You’re working backwards to what you need to do. If somebody had ejaculated and the condom broke … Let’s pause on that one because I want to make sure I give you better advice on that.
If the condom came off while you were withdrawing, which has happened to me, get the condom out of the hole-
Cathy: Carefully.
Reid: Carefully, as quickly as possible. That’s really useful.
Cathy: If you haven’t been tested for STIs or STDs, and you haven’t had that conversation with your partner, now is … Once you’ve calmed down, it’s a really good time to either discuss what your status is and what your partner’s status is or schedule to get some tests done, just so that you know.
Reid: If there was ejaculation involved, and it was penis-vagina sex … Disregard this advice for this moment if you’re being fucked in the bum because this is a pregnancy thing … If the condom breaks, and there is now semen inside of the vagina, you’re at risk for pregnancy, unless you are on kinds of birth control that prevent that kind of thing from happening.
You may want to go and check out Plan B – the morning after pill, so that you’re not at risk for pregnancy. You get to make those decisions for yourself around your own body and your own beliefs around things like that.
Then you want to have a conversation with each other about STIs and STDs. Hopefully … The world is not a perfect place … But you had the safer sex elevator conversation before you guys had the sex-
Cathy: Link is below.
Reid: Link is below … So that you know what is going on status wise. What’s going to be a little bit … It’s not even painstaking, but the, “Ah, we have to go get tested … Most STIs won’t show up. You tested positive for them for several weeks. What I would recommend is that you do some research at http://CDC.gov. If you’re on a college campus, go to your local health services and find out what’s going on there.
If you have a doctor, talk to them. If you think your doctor is not super sex positive, then I would call one of your STD/HIV clinics in your neighborhood. FreeSTDTesting.org should give you a listing of those or you can email me at Reid@ReidAboutSex.com. Then walk yourself slowly off the plank of panic. The great thing about STIs and STDs is that most of them are treatable, but you need to know you have them.
If you’re having anal sex and the condom breaks, then, obviously, not worried about pregnancy, so all the other advice after the pregnancy bit of advice, you need to take into account.
Cathy: For oral or anal, this will also apply.
Reid: If you’re having hookup sex with people that you don’t necessarily know if you can trust them, then you definitely want to, going to go and get an STI test at some point soon. Again, you can always email me at Reid@ReidAboutSex.com for more individual like, “I have this question about this particular thing.” We’re not going to cover it in a whole video, so it’s not so long.
For you, who wrote into us, thank you so much for writing in. For those of you who leave comments, thank you for leaving comments. We hope this video has lessened some of your fear and trepidation and empowered you. Please leave your comments below. What do you do when a condom breaks? Bye.
Here’s the link to the Safer Sex Elevator Speech: