“It’s a cliché that they don’t work”
Do you have any evidence that supports your position that they ‘work well’?
This evidence indicates the opposite that condoms actually don’t work well.
Where’s your evidence?
I’m not going to look it up for you. Have any of you guys ever opened a pack of Trojans? You couldn’t get anything through those things. If they have a hole, they fail. But they never seem to have holes...
The primary problems condoms have is they don’t store well. The packages are fairly delicate, and any break in them allows the condom to dry, and they only have to dry out a very little bit and microscopic cracks appear, at which point leakage or full fledged tearing occurs. Keeping them someplace where they don’t get squished or banged around dramatically improves effectiveness. Which makes them very bad for “active” people dating around who tend to bring condoms with them, in pockets and purses. The old symbol of the “ready” man, the condom ring showing on the side of his wallet, is really a symbol of doing it wrong, just a couple days in a wallet will kill a condom.
Most of the failure for most of the contraceptive methods revolve around doing it wrong, not following the instructions to the letter. When people actually follow instructions they all work well.