For many, a broken condom means the difference between a grade-A session of Netflix and Chill and a nightmare evening that turns into an anxious waiting game.
Now Swedish intimacy company LELO is getting into the condom manufacturing business to prevent uncomfortable and unsafe situations like this from happening again. The 20-year-old company, dubbed the "Apple of the pleasure products industry," has reinvented the rubber.
From across the room, the HEX condom looks pretty ordinary - an eggshell-colored piece of latex that unrolls into a phallic shape. But up close, it becomes apparent where the name comes from. A faint, hexagonal patterned honeycomb lattice is etched into the material.
This eye-catching design is part of a condom that is stronger, less likely to tear, and potentially more comfortable than a traditional condom.
For nearly 100 years, the condom - one of the most effective methods of protecting against pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections - has been in desperate need of a makeover. While computers grew small enough to fit in our pockets and cars learned to drive, the latex condom has remained more or less unchanged since it was invented in the 1920s.
That's a problem, because the rubber as we know it is an incredibly flawed medical device. It slips, it breaks, and it reduces sensitivity for male wearers.
Sitting in a conference room in San Francisco, founder Filip Sedic thrusts his hand inside the condom and fans his fingers. The latex clings and thins around the edges of his fingernails, but does not break. Sedic grabs a pen from the table and tries to puncture it again.
"People say, 'I don't use it because it might break.' Give me a break," Sedic says, shaking his head. "But people will still use that as an excuse. We have to make sure to eliminate all of these excuses."
There's a correlation between disliking condoms and leaving them in the nightstand.
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