Moisturizer or lubricant, and when you need both

A moisturizer goes on whether or not anything happens that night. A lubricant goes on because something is happening in the next few minutes. Buying the wrong one is why a lot of women decide the whole category does not work for them.

One soaks in, the other sits on top

A moisturizer soaks in. That is the point of it, and it is why one application tells you almost nothing.

A lubricant does not soak in and is not meant to. It sits on the surface, between two things that are moving against each other. It works while it is wet and in the right place, and it stops working when it dries or gets wiped away. When that happens halfway through, the answer is more lubricant rather than a different brand.

Daily, against only when you need it

A moisturizer runs on a schedule. Ours is a daily one. Foria's Everyday Vulva Moisturizer is the external version, hormone-free, a pump you work into vulvar skin with clean hands. If you bought a moisturizer somewhere else, read the box, because some are every second or third day. Hang it on something you already do at the same time each day.

Foria's Hydrating Melts are the internal version. They are suppositories, individually wrapped, so one goes in a bag and the carton stays home. Follow the timing on the carton.

Outside and inside are separate complaints. The vulva is the part you can see and touch, and the vagina is inside. Each of these is made for one and not the other. Plenty of women have both kinds of dryness and are only buying for one.

A lubricant runs on no schedule. You use it at the time, and you use as much as you want. Use more than feels like enough, and add more when you need it. If you have decided a lubricant did not work for you, the amount is the first thing to change.

Moisturizer ten minutes before sex, and lubricant only on the nights you have sex

Putting a moisturizer on ten minutes before sex is not a plan. It soaks in, which is what you bought it for, so by the time you want slip there is nothing left sitting on the surface.

The reverse mistake is quieter and much more common. A woman uses lubricant on the nights she has sex, decides she has handled her dryness, and spends the rest of the week uncomfortable in jeans and at her desk. Lubricant on Saturday does nothing for you on Wednesday. If the dryness is there when nothing is happening, a lubricant was never the product for it.

So women with both kinds of dryness use both, and they use them together. If you tried a moisturizer for a week and gave up, that was not a fair trial. A week is a fair trial for a lubricant. One night tells you very little about something you are meant to use daily.

Oil and condoms, and the other rules worth knowing

• Oil and latex condoms do not mix. Oil weakens latex and you will not see it happening. That includes the coconut oil in your kitchen and every body oil we sell.
• Silicone lubricant breaks down a silicone surface, and the damage does not undo itself. Use water-based with any device we sell.
• Water-based dries as you go. A splash of water on your fingers brings it back, so you may not need the bottle again.
• Condom compatibility is printed on the bottle. The words to look for are latex condom compatible, and if they are not on the label, do not assume them.

We sell three lubricants and all three are water-based. Wicked's Simply Natural Gel is the one that is latex condom compatible, so that is the bottle when condoms are involved, and it says safe with silicone toys as well. Wicked's Aloe Lubricant is water-based with aloe and says the same thing about toys. System JO's Agape is made without parabens, glycerin, glycol, oil or silicone, and it is the bottle women with a reaction history ask for by name. Agape does not carry the silicone toy line that the two Wicked bottles carry, so we are not going to say it for them. It also costs more per ounce than either Wicked bottle, and if no lubricant has ever given you trouble there is no reason to spend that. We would rather say so here than at the register.

We do not stock a silicone lubricant at all, so we cannot sell you the kind that lasts longest, on a night when that is the kind you want.

If it hurts, that is a different conversation

If sex hurts, that is worth a doctor rather than a bigger bottle of lubricant.

Pain during sex, burning, bleeding, itching that will not settle, and dryness that arrived suddenly rather than gradually all belong at an appointment. A lubricant makes the friction part easier, which is exactly what makes it so good at burying something a doctor should look at.

We cannot tell you what any of that is, and neither can a website. What we can tell you is that painful sex and vaginal dryness are ordinary things to raise at an appointment, and whoever you see has heard it before.

A lubricant applied to a problem that is not a friction problem does nothing at all. If you have been managing around this with a bottle in the drawer since last summer, that is the part to say out loud. Take the bottle in with you, because it is a shorter conversation when she can read the label herself.