All the terrible things that can happen to us if we’re irresponsible about having sex have been drilled into our heads since middle school. You’d think STDs and getting pregnant were a guarantee every time you have sex, but luckily, that’s not the case. In terms of accidental pregnancy, it’s a lot less common than the statistics would have you believe. Of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take precautions anyway, because you just never know. These days, there are plenty of birth control options out there to fit your particular lifestyle/desire, but all of them are annoying in their own ways – though the annoyances are preferable to an unwanted pregnancy, for sure.
Here are a few things that suck about contraceptives that every woman who’s taken them can relate to.
- Trying to remember to take the pill at the same time every day. It’s only one little pill, so it shouldn’t be that hard to remember, right? If you’re one of those people that doesn’t exactly have a consistent routine, remembering to take your pill at the exact same time every day can be harder than it seems, and a missed day could potentially spell disaster.
- Finding the right method for you, which can take forever. There are so many to choose from, and there’s really no way to know what will work best for you until you try them. If you’re one of the unlucky ones, you could be dealing with a lot of trial and error at the expense of your hormone levels, which is never fun.
- Still having to use condoms a lot of the time. We all know hormonal birth control methods don’t protect against STDs, so if you’re having casual sex, condoms are still recommended. Not many people actually like condoms, they’re just a necessary evil.
- Stopping to find/open/put on a condom. If condoms are your method of choice (and they do have their pros), it can kind of kill the mood when you have to go on a scavenger hunt through your underwear drawer before you can get it on.
- The effect on your sex drive. Birth control is supposed to make it so you can have sex with abandon and not have to worry about getting pregnant, but when you have no sex drive to speak of, taking the pill at all kind of becomes unnecessary.
- The adult acne. For a lot of women, hormonal birth control evens out their testosterone levels and helps them manage breakouts. For others, messing with hormone levels at all actually causes their acne to get worse (or starts it off to begin with). Luckily, there are a lot of different methods with different hormone levels and it could just be a matter of finding the right one for you.
- When your friends all swear by their particular method, but none of them work for you. It can be really frustrating when other people seem to have no problem finding their perfect birth control when for you, if a side effect is possible, you’re going to experience it.
- The sheer terror when you realize you missed a pill. Especially if you had sex last night. Let the Plan B debate begin.
- The weight fluctuations. There’s a lot of debate over whether hormonal birth control causes weight gain, but the reality is that everyone is different. One method might make you gain weight but have no affect on your friend, and vice versa with other methods. There’s no way to really know how your body will react.
- Guys who whine about using a condom. If you’re in the process of trying to find the right hormonal birth control method for your body, you still need to use a condom. If that’s such a hassle for your boyfriend, ask him if he’d prefer abstinence.
