Condoms and rate of failure

[SisterAct123]

Condoms are also 98% effective at preventing pregnancy. This means that 2 out of 100 women using male condoms as contraception will become pregnant in a year. In real world use, about 15 in every 100 women a year who use condoms as contraception become pregnant (85% effective).

This is from the nhs website. How can they be so ineffective?

Most people totally underestimate the likelihood of accidental pregnancy with condoms or the Pill. They fail because they aren't perfect, and people aren't perfect either.

So what protection does the app offer?

It's not guesswork. I mean (as per my post) relying on it is probably not a good idea. But you track where you are in your cycle, and will have information on your fertile time.

I wouldn't rely on it myself (given that cycles can vary randomly) but absolutely it can be used as a part of contraceptive approach. Not sure why that's so hard to understand?

Anyway aren't you more worried about your your friend's pregnancy & likely father of same, rather than the finer details of cycle tracking?

DH and I have used condoms for 25 years. Never had one fail. However, I know at least 10 babies born due to contraceptive pill failure.

User error. In 25 years of marriage the only times I got pregnant were planned (and within a month both times). Yes, we had a lot of sex thank you.

In my 50+yrs, I've never once had a condom tear. How the f can they tear? I don't believe it.

I came across this thread by accident and thought I’d comment after reading other replies. I’ve fallen pregnant once while using condoms years ago. I couldn’t tell you exactly what happened…there was no obvious damage/rip/tear to the condom and it didn’t come off during so I concluded there must have been a leak that we couldn’t see. Perhaps it was just that small?
Additionally, I’ve also fallen pregnant whilst on the contraceptive pill. Before anyone asks…yes I was taking my pill every day and hadn’t missed any either! I’d been taking that specific pill regularly for a couple of years beforehand and I was meticulous about never missing any. No contraceptive is 100%! To be fair though, I have been told I’m extremely fertile so that probably didn’t help me.
Today I’m a mother of 5

Sorry @Onnabugeisha , I had you mixed up with a poster called Cuppasouper. Who really was completely infuriating, asking for stats and then ignoring them, misunderstanding them, dismissing them and making up their own. It was exactly the problem of not being able to see that varied individual outcomes go into making up improbable probabilities.
I still stand by my view that it’s extremely unlikely (which does not mean impossible) that this baby has condom-using-man as the father.
Condoms really do not have a 2% failure rate everytime you use them. It’s 2% over a year. So if the average women in the surveyed was having sex once a week then it would be around 50 times less likely to happen in one er, usage. So more like 2/ 100x50 or a 1/2500 chance of falling pregnant from that one off. Of course there are things that we could take into account to make that stat more accurate. Like what point in her cycle she had sex with condom-wearing man. The odds of her getting pregnant from unprotected sex are more like 80-95% over a year (depending on age) and depending on what point in her cycle the sex happened, you could be looking at odds more like 1/3 for a one off occasion.

I’ve been using condoms as a main method of contraception for 25 years now. In that whole time two of them broke - both from the same box.

i think 98 involves some very incorrect use.

Pregnancy isn't 100% every incidence of unprotected sex so this 2% must be alot of broken condoms

Sent only has to get somewhere that it can swim from. That can even be the vulva. Pregnancies have occasionally happened from ejaculation on the vulva.

But he ejaculated inside her, presumably anyway?

*Semen

(the "it" being a sperm)

I would agree that the likelihood of the unprotected sex man being the father is still much higher than that with the condom wearing man.

Though is does depend on cycle.

I'm a bit confused, is she definitely pregnant?

In spite of the failure rate, even if used correctly, it's low enough that - if they used them correctly - condom wearing guy is much much less likely to father any child than non condom wearing guy.

She also needs an std check if she had unprotected sex twice in a ONS.

The statistics are skewed because people lie.
Some pregnant women seeking termination are too embarrassed to admit to the doctor that they didn’t use any contraception, so they claim that the condom failed.
It’s the only believable method to blame, since it would be obvious if they had never been fitted with a coil or prescribed the pill. In my experience, condoms from British manufacturers, eg London Rubber, makers of Durex, are extremely reliable when used In accordance with instructions.

I wonder how often the failure is down to the wrong size being used

I knew someone who claimed to have got pregnant while on the pill and using condoms, with no apparent condom malfunction or reason for reduced effectiveness of the pill. I found it difficult to believe, the chances of condom malfunction happening exactly the same time as the pill failing must be pretty small…….

The stats suggest that you'd expect one pregnancy every fifty years. All the people on this thread are saying they've used them successfully for ten, fifteen, twenty five years: they still probably wouldn't expect a failure leading to pregnancy with perfect use.

That said, is there anyone on this thread saying that they used condoms perfectly but still had an unintended pregnancy? I can't remember without reading all the way back.

I’d agree with that. And as for splitting. There’s that old student gag of pulling one over your head and blowing it up using your nose. They blow up to double the size of your head without splitting and they’ll easily hold 4/5 litres of water. But then the rate of contraception failure on this site overall is quite literally, unbelievable !.

After checking back, there's three women on this thread saying they got pregnant while using condoms perfectly in their opinion: two from obvious splits and one from invisible error.

Yes! As soon as I saw the title.

As the woman who suffered from two split condoms, one resulting in pregnancy and termination and the follow on mental health issues linked to that, I find your comment deeply vulgar and quite frankly, nasty.

I should also add they were durex condoms, and in date!

Also I don't know how the stats are skewed by incidences where you know the condom split etc then used the map right away.

An advantage of condoms over hormones is that you usually know at the time if they have failed.

Then at least you can try to minimise the chances-map to hand, good wash and spermicide etc!

Any method has a failure rate. Absitenence is the only way to avoid.

In my experience of condoms, which I usually associate with one night stands or short relationships, are sometimes used when drunk.

Back with one of my exes at the start, we were both very drunk and realized the next morning that the condom actually fell off as it wasn't put on properly. Its safe to say I got the coil a short time later.