Three years of oral examinations were perfect fodder for Ellie*, 25, to nurture a crush on her dentist — and, after running into him at a festival and shamelessly flirting, it turned out he felt the same. So, they finally bit the bullet and went on a first date. But when the end of the evening came, she didn’t want to invite him back to her house where she lives with her parents and older sister.
“We’ve been obsessed with each other since the day we met; there was lots of tension, lots of flirting, and obviously we wanted to do things,” says Ellie. “So we found a park bench that was secluded and dark, and he went down on me. A couple of weeks later we ended up on the bench again, and this time we had sex. I was wearing a skirt so it was pretty easy. It was fun, reckless, and stupid, and certainly isn’t going to be a regular thing, but there is something teenagery and nostalgic about it.”
Ellie isn’t the only one reverting to adolescent adventurousness with where she’s having have sex — according to a recent Lovehoney survey, 40% of young people say their living situation is directly impacting their love life. More than half (51%) of 18 to 24-year-olds and 38% of Gen Z live in shared living arrangements, with 37% and 27% respectively living with their parents, Lovehoney finds — and this is up 9.9% since 2014.
And fair enough, if you’re lucky enough to have a rent-free option, why wouldn’t you take it? We’re not exactly living through an economic boom. Salaries have been stagnant since the pandemic, the job market is increasingly difficult for young people to enter, and the cost of living and rent is so high that two in five workers have little to no money left after paying bills — and this continues to grow for those living in cities in particular. Add that to the already-existing intimacy crisis — fuelled by dating apps, polarised politics, and the lingering effects of the pandemic — and the possibility of sex becomes almost impossible.
Sharing a wall (or even a front door) with your parents and siblings while trying to navigate all certainly doesn’t help. Living with family isn’t exactly compatible with spontaneous sex, no matter your relationship status — 54% of young people wouldn’t have sex with a long-term partner under their parents’ roof. But it’s especially tricky if you’re having casual sex, or trying to, as 77% of young people wouldn’t bring back a one-night stand while other people are in the house.
Unsurprisingly, this means young people living with their family are having sex 49% less than the average person in the UK — or 35 times per year, compared to the national average of 68. But those who do manage to squeeze sexy time in are, like Ellie, often resorting to some whacky places: 22% say they have sex in the bathroom, 18% in their cars, and 28% in hotel rooms or Airbnbs.
Everyone's clicking on...
Amber*, 27, tried the whole renting-a-hotel-every-other-week debacle in her last relationship, but now she’s single, she only has sex at sex parties. Although she works as a sex coach, and is open with her parents and brother about her job, she never brings partners home to their shared house. “Even though I’m very lucky to have a great relationship with everyone I live with, I just couldn’t bring someone home and say, ‘We’re not dating, we’re not together, we don’t do anything romantic and I don’t like them, I’m just sleeping with them’,” Amber says.
These close relationships also come with a lack of privacy. “My parents work from home, so everyone’s home all the time,” continues Amber. “We’re in and out of each others’ bedrooms.” Sneaking people into the house is simply not an option because someone is always home, she explains, and often her parents will be awake to make sure she comes home safe from a night out. To top it all off, their house has a doorbell with a camera on it that makes a noise every time you open and close the door. “There is just no way I could ever do it secretly, so now I just go to sex parties and that’s it.”
But it’s not like there’s a sex party happening every night. And, as a self-described “homebody”, Amber simply isn’t looking to go on dates — which she describes as “like asking me to go to war” — either. All of this means she’s had sex six individual times in the past 18 months. “For some people that’s a lot, for some people it’s not,” she says. “For me personally that’s only six.”
One silver lining, though, is that the sex she’s having at these parties is much more pleasurable than the sex she was having before. Although Gen Z is famously believed to be having less casual sex than generations before them, this doesn’t necessarily make them any less out there with the sex they are having — literally. Several of the women I spoke to found inventive ways to shag without prying eyes (and ears) at home finding out. One woman, aged 27, said she occasionally has sex in pub and bar toilets, and even portaloos, to avoid taking a date back to her family home. Another, aged 28, said she’s had to get experimental in parks, the back of a van, and “even on the South Bank beach one time against a lovely wall of algae”. One 25-year-old woman once utilised the woods for a steamy encounter, while another, also 25, has turned to sex in a stationary lift, a front garden, and a library.
All of these women said that just because the sex isn’t in their freshly-made bed, that doesn’t mean it’s any less enjoyable. Often, it’s actually more fun. “I don’t think I’m lacking anything to have a more fulfilled sex life,” agrees Ellie. In fact, she wonders if different living situations might make her less selective about who she sleeps with.
For Ellie, bringing someone home is a lot more effort than it’s worth. “Even though I’m very open with my family and we talk about dating, and I let them know if I’m staying over somewhere, bringing someone into our house feels totally different,” she explains. “It feels disrespectful, and I think it would be uncomfortable for everyone. Personally, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it because I’d be too worried about keeping people up by being noisy or being awkward about having some random person in our house.”
If straight-up talking to your parents about having sex is awkward or difficult, opening up a conversation about privacy more broadly might be an easier approach, explains Miranda Christophers, sex and relationship therapist and founder of The Therapy Yard. “Talk to your parents or your flatmates about getting some private alone time with your partner. Ask how you can make it work and suggest that it can be mutual, because they might like some alone time as well, for hobbies or to have time with their partners on their own.”
Of course, there are parents out there that, for a number of reasons, will not be open to talking about privacy or intimacy, let alone sex, and may not respond well to setting boundaries overall. But Christophers suggests that examining our preconceptions about sex could be helpful when deciding whether to have these conversations. “This is about pleasure and intimacy — perfectly natural things to want as a human being,” she says. “There are different challenges for young people in terms of how parents will respond, but it’s also worth thinking about the way you think about sex, and what it is about sex that makes it disrespectful to somebody else you know.”
You never know, this exercise might even inspire some creativity and adaptability when it comes to how you see intimacy. “People immediately assume intimacy is sexual, but there are other ways people can stay connected both sexually and in terms of intimacy,” explains Christophers. “Have a chat with partners to see what they need to meet their needs.” Once you have your own idea of what intimacy could look like for you, in all its different forms, a whole world of opportunities could arise — in your parents] house, outside, or wherever.
“It might be thinking about practical things, like playing music, or finding a space where you live where you could get more privacy,” she suggests. “If it’s really difficult to have privacy where you live, think about whether your friend has some space you could use from time to time. You might consider having more sex virtually, or finding somewhere to rent for brief periods.”
One thing’s for sure, says Christophers: “It’s innate within us to want connection and pleasure, so people will continue to have physical sex — they might just need to find new ways of navigating it.”
In the meantime, there’ll always be the park bench.
*Names have been changed
Honey is the Senior Sex and Relationships E-commerce Writer for Cosmopolitan, Women’s Health and Men’s Health. She covers shopping guides and reviews of the best sex toys; deals events — including Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday; and sex, dating, and LGBTQ+ trends.
Her journalism career started in 2020 when she started Sextras, a podcast and digital magazine about sex and relationships. Find Sextras on Spotify or Substack, where she writes and chats about everything from positive masculinity and how to practise sex magic, to why the latest kink or porn category is blowing up.
She has an MA in Magazine Journalism from City, University of London, and previously reported for HR magazine. Her features also appear in Glamour, Refinery29, The Independent, and more.
When she's not asking everyone she meets invasive questions about their sex and dating lives, you'll find Honey singing around her flat, teaching herself a new craft, or working her way through a new '90s/'00s box set with her flatmate.
