Like Tori Cooper, the teenage daughter of Jon Hamm’s lead in Apple TV+’s Your Friends and Neighbors, 22-year-old Alisha Menon* is still mortified by her father walking in on her hooking up with a friend two years ago. “He doesn’t usually enter my room without knocking, but my dog was barking to be let in,” the Mumbai-based Psychology student grimaces. “I was in bed fully naked and had to grab a pillow to cover myself. My friend and I pretended we were talking, but obviously that wasn’t very believable.” To both her relief and confusion, her father simply shut the door and never brought up the incident again. Understandably, Menon now makes sure to only call dates over on weekends, when her parents are away in Alibaug. But this Gen Zer is not the only one whose romantic and sexual life bears the brunt of her living arrangements.
In a nation where over 80% of young people (aged 22 to 29) continue to live with their families well into adulthood, sneaking around one’s own home as a grownup is not unheard of. Ideally, with adulthood should come the crummy rental along with complete independence as well as sexual and romantic freedom. But in India, the failure-to-launch syndrome doesn’t quite come with as tight a timeline. The reasons are many—from financial realities (yes, it’s cost-effective, especially on shitty fresher salaries) to the fact that it remains socially and culturally acceptable (even preferred) to continue living with your parents well into adulthood. But this is not without the major downside to your dating life. Hunkering down in your childhood bedroom means navigating complex family structures (whether your home is conservative or not) and, most importantly, a lack of privacy.
Indian Gen Zers are used to keeping their romantic relationships and dating lives hidden to avoid unnecessary drama. What this also means is they can never casually invite a partner over to spend time together within the comfort of their (parents’) four walls.
Bengaluru-based Amisha Sisodhiya* faces the same issue and opines the restriction negatively impacts relationship dynamics. “If you’re forced to only meet outside, it affects your intimacy because you hardly get any private quality time together. I’m a homebody, so if I didn’t live with my parents my ideal date would have been preparing food in the house and watching something on Netflix,” reveals the 24-year-old strategist, perhaps explaining why Gen Z is increasing missing out on sex.
While personal pads can often provide a safe space to foster healthy relationships, rising rentals and fear of an impending recession is making Gen Zers feel powerless. “Homes can feel like an extension of us, where we are more authentic and relaxed as opposed to outside, where there’s a public persona and a more society-appropriate version of us,” explains psychotherapist Sanjana Nair. “Getting to know a partner at home opens up conversations and adds a new sense of vulnerability to the relationship. It allows intimacy to grow and also lets you get a sense of domestic compatibility.”
Sisodhiya remembers the one time she did invite her partner home for a movie night along with her friends. “Since it was late at night and my parents were asleep, he pulled me closer to cuddle on the couch. Out of nowhere, my mum came in and he basically flung me across the room.”
When a home feels more like it is our family’s than our own, an added sense of anxiety comes with spending time there. “You don’t have complete autonomy and may find yourself censoring your actions: don’t touch this, be quieter, don’t move things around,” Nair elaborates. “When this underlying nervousness persists, you may struggle to fully enjoy ourselves.”
She adds that there is usually also pressure to make the most of the time when your parents aren’t home. “You may feel like you have to make things sexual instead of enjoying non-sexual intimacy.” It’s not just this; intimacy expert Aili Seghetti reveals that rushed or hidden sexual encounters can also lead to premature ejaculation, anorgasmia and exhibitionistic fantasies. “I had a client once who could only have sex with his girlfriend when his parents weren’t around or in hotels where he could book a room for the hour,” she shares. “This went on for about five years, and after getting married he realised that those early experiences defined how he desired to have sex, making a longer and more enjoyable experience a struggle.”
Many Gen Zers admit that the risk of being caught hooking up by their parents has led them to have sexual encounters in relatively unsafe public spaces. “Horny young people are going to do what they’re going to do wherever it’s feasible without fully considering the implications of a location,” shrugs 23-year-old Jvalita*, who once got caught lying about inviting her boyfriend over when her parents were out of town. “And considering that PDA is such a taboo in India, it’s especially risky for younger couples to be at it outside and risk the wrong kind of attention.”
Despite being aware of these risks, many Gen Zers confess to hooking up in OYO rooms, shady hotels in back alleys, cinema halls, building stairways, and most popularly, in cars on long drives. “If I really want to make a move and both of our houses aren’t free, I’d probably just ask to go for a drive and park somewhere,” laughs Menon. It is no surprise that Mumbai’s beaches and, sometimes, highways, are lined with couples looking for privacy during sexual encounters.
For many queer people, the risk of hooking up in both public spaces and at home is even higher. When 23-year-old Shriya Kadam* first started dating a girl—her junior from college—she was confident it would never even cross her family’s mind that they were together. “I was not at all careful because I thought nobody would assume anything. We’d just be two best friends studying together in a room,” she confesses. However, it wasn’t long before her family began to suspect they were romantically involved. “This one time, my partner came over and we were attending online classes in my room. The volume was loud, so it seemed like we were studying, but we had locked the door,” Kadam shares, “My grandmother knocked at some point, and we were butt naked. It took us 5 to 10 minutes to get dressed, and when we opened the door, I think we still looked flushed.” While her grandmother seemed instantly suspicious and had endless questions, Kadam managed to evade them all, swearing they had taken time because they were in the middle of an important class.
In the last three years, my own sexual encounters have led me to places I wouldn’t even go with a gun. From roadside hotels where the receptionist leered at me to an abandoned street in Aarey Colony where the boy I was with could park his car, and once, on my own bedroom floor as my sister lay asleep in her bed—many of these experiences were marred by the anxiety of knowing I could be caught at any moment. Even though my parents are aware of my active sexual life, it is too uncomfortable to get physical with people in a shared space. Yet, on dates outside the house, I find myself confused about how to make a move in view of other people.
Seghetti might have a solution. “Start talking about intimacy on the date, fantasies, turn-offs and turn-ons. Foreplay happens in the brain most of the time,” she says. Her suggestions for the safest places to hook up are hotel rooms or a friend’s apartment. It is in the latter that I have often felt the calmest and had my most unhurried sexual encounters.
Ultimately, if the space that should feel the safest to you is not where you can be intimate, the best option is to find newer safe spaces where you can explore romantic and sexual dynamics. A hotel room, sometimes. A friend’s house in my case and a car, in the case of Menon. If none of these places work, though, there is always the joy of the coy ‘My parents aren’t home’ text.
*Some names have been changed to protect the individuals’ privacy
