Nadia Bokody: ‘Sex toy mistake most women make’

There’s no better way to kill the, ahem, vibe during some solo time then by making this “damaging” sex toy slip-up, writes Nadia Bokody.

About a year ago now, I made a terrible, terrible mistake.

On my way out the door to a weekend getaway, I closed my apartment’s blinds, double-checked the oven and hair straightener were off, and lovingly placed my favourite vibrator in its charging dock. (Priorities, ammirite?)

Just a few weeks prior, I’d had my heart shattered by a whirlwind love affair that had ended almost as abruptly as it began. It was the worst thing to happen to me that year.

At least, it was until I returned home from that trip.

As I’d learn that day, true heartbreak isn’t a relationship ending. It’s having your vibe die on you mid-sesh.

News.com.au sex columnist Nadia Bokody. Picture: Instagram/Nadia Bokody.

Despite having written about sex for almost a decade and owning more adult toys than most people do underwear (#jobperks), I still wasn’t aware of one of the biggest rules of vibrator ownership: never, ever leave a vibe on charge for more than two hours.

I tend to live life on the edge when it comes to my phone battery (ain’t no one got time for a full charge when the Uber’s on the way and you’re at 17 per cent because you drained the battery watching women dance seductively on TikTok again), but I’ve always been conscientious about recharging my vibrators.

And because I’m not willing to play it fast and loose with my orgasms (the same of which can’t be said for having a phone with more than 3 per cent battery at the end of the night), I’ve typically applied a more-is-more logic to rebooting my vibes. In my mind at least, the longer the charge, the more juice I’d get out of my toy.

But as it turns out, this strategy couldn’t have been more wrong.

Too much charging can kill your sex toys and any sexy solo time you had planned. Picture: iStock.

Though it’s scandalously uncommon knowledge, most sex toys contain lithium-ion batteries – the same kind you’ll find in your laptop – which are sensitive to lengthy charging. Leaving your vibrator plugged in overnight, or for an entire weekend, can create an unstable environment inside the battery, increasing pressure and ultimately putting your vibe at risk of burning out.

At the very least, if it doesn’t die after an all-nighter in the charging dock, you’ll have significantly shortened its lifespan.

And here’s something else you probably didn’t know: you should wait till the battery is low, but not dead, before reaching for the charging cable.

Charging a vibrator from 0 per cent can be equally damaging to its lifespan, so ideally invest in one that has an indicator light to let you know when it’s getting close to dying, or get familiar with roughly how many uses it takes for your vibe to die, and put it on to charge one use away from the battery giving out.

And if you really want to make your toy go the extra mile, avoid charging it in a hot room. Heat is extremely destructive to lithium-ion batteries, and definitely not your friend when you own a vibrator (it can also degrade the silicone most toys are made out of).

It’s important to wait until your vibrator is completely dead to charge too, Bokody writes. Picture: iStock.

Look, I’m sure these details are included somewhere in the fine print of those tiny instruction books inside the product boxes, but if you’re a rebel who makes their own rules like me, you’ve probably never read past the bit about how to turn it on.

“Screw a piece of paper telling me what to do! I’ll figure this out for myself!” I yell incredulously, tossing away the minuscule booklet made for ant people and promptly plugging my vibe in to charge long enough to ensure it’ll give out at the most inopportune time possible.

So, yeah, we should probably all start reading those manuals …

But, like, also – could this info maybe be a little more accessible? Preferably on the first page, in the first line, in all-caps bold font, given our orgasms quite literally depend on it?

Because it certainly seems as though I’m not the only one who’s had to lay a perfectly good vibrator to rest on account of not knowing this *EXTREMELY IMPORTANT INFORMATION*.

I talk about a lot of controversial, salacious topics on Instagram, and no Instagram story has attracted quite the reaction I received when I reposted a woman’s anonymous DM complaining her vibrators kept dying, and commented, “It’s because you’re not meant to charge for more than two hours, babes.”

The responses I received ranged from shock to sheer gratefulness – one woman even messaged me to suggest I was doing the Lord’s work. And, like, I’m not going to say I’m a hero or anything, but I mean, I DID always know I was going to change the world, soooo … yeah, Mum is proud.

Now if you don’t mind, I need to wrap this up. I’ve got some very important business to attend to, and if my vibrator doesn’t come off charge in the next five minutes, it could be heartbreak for me all over again.

For more life-changing sex toy tips and self-deprecation, follow Nadia Bokody on Instagram and YouTube