I’ve gotten a couple questions recently about lube, condoms and toys and how they interact with each other, so I thought I’d put them together and talk about which substances play well with others and which decidedly do not.
I got the following question as feedback on Sarah Says: The friend zone and butt sex dos and don’ts after it was revisited in Ominocity’s Top 15 Stories of 2015.
“I opened up my ‘Tickle Trunk’ the other day to discover a gooey mess in the bottom of the box where one of my favourite sex toys used to be. It wasn’t stored in a particularly warm place, so why did my toy melt?”
– Toyless in Toontown
My best guess is that you stored said favourite toy along with other toys made of different materials and allowed them to touch. Mixing silicone toys in with jelly or other rubber or soft plastic toys could be asking for trouble, since one may degrade the other when exposed to it for long periods of time. If your toys are all 100% silicone it is probably okay to put them together, but sex toy retailers generally warn their customers not to let any of their sex toys touch in storage since even toys that claim to be nothing but silicone often have other materials in the mix.
Jelly toys are especially susceptible to this type of “melting” when exposed to toys made of other materials. So it’s a good idea to keep your toys separate. My mother sewed a cute little pouch for hers and I wrap mine in facecloths before I lay them next to each other in my toy box. Use a lint-free fabric to compartmentalize your toys so they’re in good shape and ready to go when you need them.
There can be issues with the interaction between silicone-based lubricant and toys as well. If both your toy and your lube are made of the finest, purest silicone, they could play well together, but most toys and most lubes are not of the finest, purest quality and could, therefore, cause problems when forced to interact. Silicone lube spells trouble when forced to play with toys made of CyberSkin and some other soft materials, but they are totally safe to use with glass, metal, acrylic and hard plastic toys. If in doubt regarding the content of your toys or lube, just use water-based lube with your sex toys and everyone will get along just fine.
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– Featured photo via Flickr user “dugspr” – Creative Commons.