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Hi Aunt Vadge,
I was having protected sex with my boyfriend, but this time I had a particularly hard time getting wet even though I was in the mood. It started to hurt because there was no lubrication and the condom’s lube had rubbed off too.
That caused some small cuts around the lower part of my labia and two further inside. I thought they were burns until my boyfriend checked and told me they were cuts. They really hurt, and they look like the mouth sores you get when you’re run down, with a bit of pus.
We’d used a new condom too — Trojan Fire and Ice — and when I googled it, lots of negative comments came up about its “hot and cold” lubricant. Could that be the cause? There are now more of these spots than when I first looked.
Cut Up
United States
Hi there Cut Up,
Two things happened at once here, and together they explain everything. First, sex without enough lubrication — your own, plus the condom’s worn off — dragged on delicate skin and caused friction cuts around the labia and just inside, exactly the small splits you found.
Second, the condom you used has a “warming/tingling” lubricant that contains capsaicin (the compound that makes chillies hot), and once your skin was already grazed and raw, that spicy lube sitting on open skin caused the burning, inflamed, weeping look — the “mouth sore with pus” appearance.
So yes, that condom very likely made a friction injury considerably worse, either through simple irritation or a mild allergic reaction. The reassuring part: open grazes like this normally weep a little as they heal (that’s not necessarily infected pus), and they settle quickly once you stop irritating them.
What to do now: stop using that condom, and gently rinse to make sure none of the warming lubricant is left on your skin. Protect the raw areas with a plain barrier — paw paw ointment or plain Vaseline — in a thin layer, which shields the skin from your underwear and from urine (which will sting).
To take the sting out of weeing, pour a cup of warm water over the area as you go to dilute the urine, and a cool pack wrapped in cloth eases the soreness. Then leave it completely alone, keep it clean and dry, wear loose cotton, and skip sex until it’s fully healed — usually only a few days to a week.
Watch for true infection — skin that doesn’t heal, gets hotter, redder, more swollen or clearly pus-filled and painful — and see a doctor if that happens or it’s getting worse rather than better.
Next time, keep a bottle of good lube handy and use it generously every time you use condoms (a dry patch of latex alone can do this), and steer well clear of “warming/tingling” condoms and lubes, which are a common cause of exactly this.
You’ll be fine — these heal fast. Our guide to cuts and tears down there has the rest.
Warmest regards,
Aunt Vadge
This is general information, not a substitute for personalised medical advice.
