Behind every statistic is a lit screen, a coded name, and a marriage that stopped being enough. As extramarital dating apps quietly cross four million users in India — with women leading the surge — we look at what the numbers really say about loneliness, desire, and the secret life of the modern Indian marriage.
At 11:47 pm, long after the house has gone quiet, a phone lights up under the blanket. The name on the screen reads “Client.” The message is anything but professional: “Tonight?”
Across urban India, these coded conversations are no longer rare whispers. They are part of a growing, discreet digital world where desire, boredom and curiosity collide—quietly, privately, and just a tap away.
The trend is no longer fringe. Extramarital dating platforms have crossed four million users in India, with a sharp rise in women joining and peak activity seen during lunch hours and late nights—moments carved out of routine for something more intimate and secret.
The app that built a market from silence
One prominent example is Gleeden, an online dating and social networking platform launched in France in 2009, specifically designed for individuals seeking extramarital relationships. Unlike mainstream apps such as Tinder or Bumble—built for single people and incidentally used by some married ones—Gleeden is engineered from the ground up for the married user. Its interface, billing system, and even its privacy controls are designed around one central premise: the person using it needs, above everything else, not to be found out.
The platform has seen significant traction in India, recently adding four million new subscribers and emerging as one of its fastest-growing markets globally. Over five million of its Indian users are married, signalling a notable rise in people seeking connections beyond traditional partnerships.
Sybil Shiddell, Country Manager of Gleeden India, described the milestone as a “watershed moment,” saying it reflects both the rapid pace of digital adoption and “a quiet but significant transformation in how individuals approach modern relationships in India.”
While over 65 per cent of Gleeden’s global user base is concentrated in the European Union, India’s growth stands out sharply. The platform’s Indian user base is composed of approximately 65 per cent men and 35 per cent women—with most users either married or in long-term committed relationships.
The women are logging on
The most striking number in Gleeden’s India data is not the total user count. It is this: women’s usage of the platform has increased by 148 per cent over the past two years.
That figure demands context. India remains a country where a woman’s sexuality—especially a married woman’s—is among the most socially policed aspects of her existence. For women to be joining an extramarital platform at nearly one and a half times their previous rate is not simply a data point. It is a signal.
The demographic shift spans both metropolitan areas and smaller towns, indicating a broader shift in how Indian women across multiple socioeconomic contexts are approaching relationship dissatisfaction—rather than simply a function of greater digital access among urban professional women.
Relationship counsellors and sociologists have been watching this shift with a mixture of concern and recognition. Indian society is traditionally rooted in collectivism, where family, caste, and community dictate life choices—including marriage. But recent research suggests a shift toward more individualistic romantic preferences, described by some scholars as “negotiated modernity”—where individuals attempt to balance emotional intimacy with cultural expectations.
Financial independence is part of the story. So is education. So, perhaps, is exhaustion—with arrangements made under pressure, with partners who stopped seeing them, with the quiet suffocation of unmet needs dressed up as stability.
Why they log on: the data behind the desire
A 2025 survey by Ipsos, commissioned by Gleeden, involving 1,510 respondents of different ages, found that approximately 33 per cent cited time deprivation in their personal relationship as a cause of extramarital engagement—with millennials constituting the highest percentage. Lack of emotional connection was another key factor: approximately 51 per cent said they did not feel emotionally attached to their partner, 42 per cent said they were missing excitement, and 38 per cent were missing physical intimacy.
Remarkably, attitudes toward relationships are also changing: approximately 58 per cent indicated they would be willing to engage in infidelity to achieve emotional fulfilment, and 41 per cent said they would consider an open relationship.
Nearly 49 per cent of respondents reported at least one instance of choosing intimacy with an AI bot over a partner. Loneliness emerged as a major factor, pointing to evolving dynamics in both physical and virtual relationships.
These are not the numbers of a society quietly content behind its closed doors.
When and where: the geography of secret desire
The data on user behaviour offers an unusually precise window into how these relationships are conducted within the rhythms of Indian domestic and professional life. On average, Indian users spend between one to one-and-a-half hours daily chatting on the platform. Activity peaks during midday hours—12 pm to 3 pm—and again late at night, between 10 pm and midnight. The lunch break and the sleeping spouse: two reliable windows in the day when a separate life becomes briefly possible.
Geographically, the app’s footprint is concentrated in major metropolitan areas but is spreading fast. Bengaluru leads with 18 per cent of users, followed by Hyderabad at 17 per cent, Delhi at 11 per cent, Mumbai at 9 per cent, and Pune at 7 per cent. The phenomenon is no longer limited to urban hubs, with a rise in users from smaller tier-2 and tier-3 cities such as Lucknow, Chandigarh, Surat, Coimbatore, Patna and Guwahati.
The dominance of Bengaluru and Hyderabad—India’s technology capitals, cities of long working hours, nuclear families, and professionals transplanted far from their roots—is telling. The geographic spread suggests that the conditions driving extramarital platform use — emotional loneliness, unmet needs, digital access, and relationship dissatisfaction — are distributed across Indian society more broadly than a metro-only narrative would suggest.
In terms of preferences, male users generally seek women aged 25 to 30, while female users tend to prefer men aged 30 to 40 — particularly professionals such as doctors, senior executives and chartered accountants. Stability and discretion, it appears, are as attractive as anything else.
The institution under pressure
India’s marriage system was not designed for the world its participants now inhabit. Traditionally, marriage in India has been viewed as a social and religious obligation rather than an individual’s choice — with families making partner selections based on religion, social status, or caste. But factors like increased autonomy in partner selection, shifting gender roles, and technological advancement are driving constant change.
Urbanisation, exposure to different cultures, media influence and easy internet availability have introduced new perspectives, leading individuals to prioritise attraction and compatibility over societal obligations. Growing acceptance of divorce and alternative relationships — previously stigmatised — is also reshaping how people think about commitment.
Add to this the peculiarly modern pressure of the always-on phone — a private universe in the pocket, available at any moment — and the conditions for what Gleeden has built become easier to understand. The app did not create the loneliness or the dissatisfaction. It simply arrived at a moment when both were widespread and a discreet digital outlet had not yet existed.
Whether Gleeden is a symptom of that change or a contributor to it is a question that sociologists, mental health professionals, and ordinary Indians in marriages across the country are navigating in real time.
The phone under the blanket
There is no tidy conclusion to this story. The four million users are not a monolith — they are lonely, adventurous, trapped, curious, bored, searching. Some are in genuinely loveless arrangements. Some are simply bored on a Tuesday night. Some will find what they are looking for; most, probably, will not.
What the data makes undeniable is that a significant and growing number of married Indians are reaching, in private, for something their marriage is not providing. The conversation about what that means — for individuals, for families, for the institution of marriage itself — has barely begun.
But the phones keep lighting up. Long after the house has gone quiet.
IBNS-TWF
