Most people these days realise that having a personal lubricant on hand for those times when things aren't exactly running totally smoothly, or just when you're in the mood to get particularly slippery, can really help to make the difference between average and mind-blowing. It used to be a simple matter choosing a lubricant because there were relatively few on the market, but it seems that these days we are overwhelmed by choice. Flavoured, tingle, warming, cooling, novelty colours and packaging and so on. It's confusing! When I saw the relatively straightforward packaging of the XY Gel from Anne Summers I threw it in my shopping cart with the rest of the stuff I was ordering from them as I thought it would be a straight up lubricant with no silly frills. All I want it to do is lubricate - flavours and colours etc aren't really my bag.

At first I thought the XY Gel was going to be a good buy. It comes out of the tube (which is like a toothpaste tube) easily and has a good gel consistency - not too liquidy so that it slips off your hand before you transfer it to where it's needed and not so jelly-like that it doesn't do its job. It is clear and more or less scentless. So far so good. Giving the gel a test-run it seems to work well, giving good lubrication over a decent amount of time. The problem is, I find that it starts to burn my nether regions if the action goes on too long or if I don't wash it off right afterwards. That's not good!

I understand that this might be an individual reaction, and it's not horrifically painful or anything, but I have tried a lot of other lubricants without any problem like this (except the "tingle" lubricants - those should all be thrown overboard somewhere), so I really don't think it's acceptable. It's also not the cheapest lubricant around so it isn't as though you're saving money by going this route.

Overall I would say give it a try if you must because maybe you won't have the same reaction (my partner seems to find it ok incidentally) but unless you've already bought it I would really recommend trying a different brand. Play is usually pretty good as is the old standard KY.