They’re broke and back at home — can Gen Z have a sex life?

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Picture this. It’s 11am on Sunday and I’m exiting an Uber, arriving at my family home in central London. My make-up is smudged, hair tangled and I’m chewing gum to mask the smell of cigarettes and tequila.
A toothbrush was not a luxury I was afforded this morning. I’m wearing black knee-high Prada boots with a vintage 1990s leopard print slip dress, covered by a hideous T-shirt with a crypto logo to protect my modesty. I’m feeling anything but modest.
The T-shirt belongs to a man who is not my boyfriend but not a stranger, a friendly acquaintance or a friend with whom I’ve recently become very intimately acquainted. It’s the second time I’ve stayed over at his and I’ve been downgraded from hoodie to T-shirt.
Before entering my flat I take off the boots to mute the inevitable sound of my arrival. The plan is to discreetly sneak through the hallway, past the kitchen and up to my bedroom, but I’m stopped in my tracks by the sound of my father calling my name. His tone is hard to recognise, it’s slightly sarcastic yet still somewhat stern as is his typical demeanour.
My parents are sitting in the kitchen, eating scrambled eggs and flicking through a pile of newspapers. They ask if I had good night and question where I was, while attempting and failing to hold back light laughter.
Now, do I want to explain to my boomer parents the complex purgatory of a situationship; a sexual relationship that involves no commitment just the constant anxiety that you’re always on the verge of being ghosted? Absolutely, not. So, I simply tell them that my phone died last night, and I stayed at my friend’s flat, ending the conversation as they eye my crypto T-shirt.
Later my self-described liberal mother will come into my room and inquire as to whom I was really with. I’ll tell her I don’t want to talk about it (code for he hasn’t texted me) and she’ll leave sympathetically. This is the pitfall of modern dating, where casual sex is accompanied by light parental interrogation the next morning.
There’s been much discourse surrounding the idea that my generation (Gen Z) is experiencing a “sex recession’’. Countless studies, including a 2021 report by Rutger University, state that both men and women, aged 18 to 23, are having 14 per cent less casual sex than young adults ten years prior.
The conversation around this issue will blame dating app fatigue, the prioritisation of friendships following the loneliness of Covid lockdowns and even the normalisation of chosen celibacy, spearheaded by celebrities such as Julia Fox who publicly stated that she’d been celibate for two and half years as a political statement, while praising its benefits.
Although I tend to agree with these points, have we also considered the economic factors? The cost of living crisis has caused rents to soar, forcing many young adults to live at home with their parents, tainting their dating lives with the possibility of an awkward familial run-in.
Personally, it has made my dating experiences as an adult far more limited. For many, going to university grants them the freedom of living away from home and parental judgment. But unfortunately, this was an experience I was not afforded.
Since I started my higher education during Covid and attended a university in London, I avoided lockdown in tiny student accommodation, opting to live at home during my three-year degree. This is still my circumstance. As a 22-year-old working as a writer, sacrificing a stable income for creative fulfilment, I can barely afford to rent in London.
So like many of my generation I have chosen to remain at home during the beginning of my professional career instead of moving into a cheap shared flat, one most likely worse than university housing.
This does mean that as a graduate I’m still forced to recycle lies I used as teenager and add “having very relaxed parents” or preferably “living alone/with a flatmate(s)” to the requirements of any future partner.
• I’m 26 — and I’ve tried the celibacy trend
I’ve discovered that nothing will ruin a romantic moment more than when two tax-paying, over-educated, twentysomething-year-olds realise they both still live at home. I’ll take forced breakfast small talk with an unfriendly flatmate over the anxiety of having to be snuck out of a romantic partner’s family home, or vice versa. Because no one wants to introduce a new lover to their parents on the first morning after.
Alternatively, when I discussed this topic with a friend who finds himself in the same situation, I was informed that he plans his rendezvous specifically for when his parents are away. This is a tactic I’m all too familiar with, because I’m on a constant mission to convince my parents to take as many holidays as possible.
But still, this scheme lacks spontaneity — a frustrating reality for many in my generation, including myself, whose dating and sex life is consumed by meticulous planning. No wonder so many of us are choosing celibacy. Since for better or worse, casual sex has become anything but casual.
By Lucy O’Brien
After university I secured my first job in London. I was freelancing on a pretty bad day rate, so couldn’t afford to rent. That meant I moved back into the family home but I was keen to not let that fact ruin my dream city-girl dating life.
First dates were a piece of cake: I’d tell my parents I had after-work drinks with a “friend” while, in reality, I was heading for happy hours in Shoreditch with a new finance bro every other week.
You may be wondering why the secrecy? After all, I’m 24. My family is close but we don’t talk about sex, ever. Watching a sex scene on TV with my parents in the room gives me enough anxiety to fill a whole therapy session, and that’s without the inevitable dad joke trying (and failing) to break the awkward silence. I couldn’t even consider the idea of bringing back a guy. The solution? Hotels.
Don’t get me wrong, nothing fancy — let’s just say I became rather well acquainted with the local Premier Inn staff. It would be £70-80 for one night; the guy I was seeing would normally pay the first time, then after that we’d split it. Next morning, I’d come home with a little bit more make-up on than normal and tell my parents all about my fun sleepover with a friend — what film we watched, what takeaway we got, a recent life event they were experiencing.
• I spent a year having casual sex — this is what I’ve learnt
By the time I came to meet my current boyfriend (which was on Hinge, of course), I was still of the mindset of leaving my parents out of the picture until things became official. When he picked me up on our first date, I instructed him to park around the corner so they wouldn’t see. Coming home after midnight with a bunch of flowers, I told them that my “friend” got them for me for “having a bad day”.
I kept my home and dating life separate as best I could, but eventually I caved. We met in February, and tried to go for a wholesome (and free) park walk until it started to snow. I put aside my pride, picked up a bottle of wine and took him back to my home for dinner with my parents: a table-set roast (which we never normally do, might I add). All very formal.
Luckily, he stuck around, and now my parents are used to having him over; they like it, even. But my dad still takes every opportunity to make an inappropriate joke — heading upstairs for an “early night” always goes down a treat. While it still never fails to make me want to crawl into a deep, dark hole and never return, it’s a small price to pay for no longer needing to think of a million different excuses for staying out all night.
By anonymous
When I lived away from home I had an active sex and dating life, which was made easier by having my own space. Since early last year I’ve been living in my mother’s home after I found I couldn’t afford anywhere else. And the consequences for intimacy have been frustrating. The dynamics of my household make it hard to find a private moment — there’s no lock on my childhood bedroom and my mother often bursts in without knocking.
Worse than that is the snooping. One time I had put my phone on a surface with the Grindr app, and its grid of topless men, open and my mother walked past and glanced at it. I flipped the phone over so furiously it nearly shattered.
I remember being in the early dating stages with a man and chatting to him on speakerphone in the kitchen while I cooked myself dinner. My mother kept coming in and out of the kitchen (usually she avoids it when I cook) to do small things — wash her hands in the sink, eat some cheese out of the fridge, push down the bin. At a very awkward moment she asked me who I was speaking to (she certainly knew) and this man I’d been on about two dates with was suddenly greeting my mother. When I’d finished the phone call and emerged from the kitchen I was quizzed on how old he was because his deeper voice suggested he was senior to me. He was, by about six years, but I declined to answer because I didn’t feel it was any of her business.
In my less guarded moments I do see it more as my mother taking an interest in my life. She’s told me that all she wants for me is to find my person and not go on a sea of endless dates and hookups — the kind of conversation we’d never be having when I was living out.
A lot of the sex I have now depends on whether the other man can “accom” or not. There was one guy I really liked but couldn’t have sex with because both of us lived with family — he with his sister, who was always home. Then a window of opportunity came when my mother went on holiday for two weeks and I decided to invite him round. But I just felt I couldn’t get into the mood. My childhood bedroom is exactly that, a childhood bedroom: its walls are still painted bright blue, it’s even got old toys, and because I shared a room with my brother it has two beds.
To be fair to him he was pretty unbothered, but the whole thing had the sense of teenagers sneaking about, which was just totally unsexy. And after we were done? The sinking Catholic guilt that I’d had sex in my family home.
By anonymous
I’m 22 and I’ve been going out with the same man for ages now, so my parents know him very well, and are extremely happy having him about the house or staying for long periods of time. Yet the idea of us having sex is one my parents have tried to banish from their minds as far as possible. It’s unimaginable that it should be alluded to, even in jest or euphemism.
However, living in a Victorian house in Kent, the floorboards of which were not meant to withstand the immense pressure of youthful, spirited love-making, shines an unfortunately bright light on things. So I’d describe my sex life at home as muted, careful and attentive (not to each other but everyone else).
When we came home to an empty house one day, we were ecstatic. We began to warm up our vocal cords, individually running through our most arousing pillow talk (which until then had remained hidden in some corner of our brain like that rotting knob of ginger at the bottom of the fruit and veg drawer). My God did those floorboards sing. The whole house became an orchestra, groaning and echoing as we made love for approximately six minutes.
At six minutes and ten seconds, we heard my mum’s car roll in. We detangled ourselves, and just as vigorously got ourselves dressed and headed downstairs, hoping she’d assume we’d decided to run a few laps around the garden and just happened to both fall into a bush.
“Hi, Mum, hi! Would you like a cup of tea?” (typically the best distraction).
“Yes, that would be lovely, thanks. I’m sure your father will have one, why don’t you go and ask him?”
“Ask him?”
“Yes, he’s upstairs having a rest.”
Supper was awkward. There was no handshake exchanged between my dad and my boyfriend as I ushered him out the door the next day.
As told to Marianne Doherty
By anonymous
Moving home after university has been a bit of a shock. I’m working in a pub, just picking up shifts for a bit of money, but I’ll only be able to move out again when I’m financially able. I do worry that living somewhere like London will be a massive struggle money-wise.
So for now, I’m back in my childhood bedroom, right next to my parents’ room. If I can hear my dad snoring, he sure as hell can hear what I’d get up to if I had a girl round. It’s constantly at the back of my mind when I’m going on dates. So I’m not really looking for anything too serious at the moment — and I can’t see myself getting into a relationship until I move out.
Scrolling through dating apps while lying on my single bed in my childhood bedroom is quite depressing. I live in High Wycombe, a town that feels small to me. I’m seeing people pop up that I went to primary school with and other semi-familiar faces. They’re the people you bump into in our town’s only nightclub. It’s not exactly sexy.
I set my dating app location to London to expand my pool. My parents aren’t too nosey but there’s certainly an unspoken awkwardness about it all. I think they knew that at university I was having fun, but now that I’m here sleeping next to them, they’d rather not know much about my romantic exploits.
If I’m spending the night somewhere, it’s pretty obvious to my family what I’m up to — and it’s viewed with a sense of suspicion. Compared with my brother or sister, who are both in long-term relationships, there’s a sense of hush-hush when it comes to my love life and it’s awkward for me to talk about.
I can’t help but feel like the odd one out in my household. I’ve lived in this house for almost my entire life and I’ve still yet to bring anyone back. I think it’s quite common these days for Gen Z to move home after university. But if I’m on a date with someone who has also just graduated and moved home, it’s a bit frustrating. It’s as if we both have the same dilemma we did when we were 17-year-olds.
As told to Elisabeth Perlman