Hands reaching out over London skyline
Image: Shutterstock / Jamie Inglis for Time Out
Image: Shutterstock / Jamie Inglis for Time Out

No sex in the smoke: is London becoming a celibate city?

Searches for ‘celibacy’ in London have increased by a quarter in the last three months. Is the capital still getting some?

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By now, you’ve probably seen Bumble’s controversial marketing campaign – the one where they plastered billboards with messages like ‘You know full well a vow of celibacy is not the answer’ and ‘Thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun’. 

The campaign spurred a huge amount of backlash on social media. ‘You’re delegitimising our celibacy because you want males to have more access to our bodies,’ said one TikTok video addressed to Bumble. ‘2.5 years of celibacy and never been better tbh,’ wrote actress Julia Fox in the comments of another related video. The dating app promptly apologised and claimed the billboards were supposed to be a funny gag for those ‘frustrated by modern dating’, but it seemed the damage was already done. 

Away from the critics of Bumble’s billboards, celibacy is trending. The hashtag ‘celibacy’ on TikTok has 22,000 posts and counting, while the phrase ‘boy sober’, coined by comedian Hope Woodard to describe abstaining from all romantic relationships with men (including situationships, people!), is also gaining traction online. ILondon specifically, Google searches for ‘celibacy’ in have increased by a quarter in the last three months. Is there any truth in all this talk? 

Sex in the city

Londoner Emily Tuck has been abstaining from sex for 16 years, making the decision after a ‘subconscious shift’ in her life made her realise she was looking for something ‘deeper, richer and more intimate’ in her relationships. ‘As a younger woman, I would’ve contemplated one-night stands or I might have had flings,’ she says. ‘Suddenly, I went, “oh no, that doesn’t feel right anymore”. It was almost like I had to raise the bar on what I was looking for.’

Despite London’s nine million-strong population, dating (and hooking up) in the city isn’t exactly a walk in the park. To start: Londoners, generally, are busy people, and the very pace of the city can make it difficult to forge a deeper connection. ‘London is a busy city with lots of options readily available, [so] you’re not going to have so many people going at a slower pace and getting to know someone,’ says Marina Lazaris, sex and relationships coach and author of Men Need Love Too.

And then there’s the good old dating apps. When you’re stuck in a never-ending cycle of swiping, it can feel like there’s almost too many choices out there – which can encourage a disposable attitude to playing the field, and all sorts of other bad behaviours like ghosting. As Lazaris says: Dating in London is a bit like [being] a kid in a candy shop.’

It’s in the numbers 

But what’s the data saying? Well, it turns out that abstinence is a trend across the entire UK. A study of changes in sexual activity published by the British Medical Journal in 2019 concluded that the frequency of sex for 16-44 year-old Brits has decreased since 1991, with the highest decline being for women across all ages and for 16-24 year-old males.

It doesn’t stop there, though: celibacy might even be a trend across the whole world, as Gen Z leads less sexually active lives despite generally having better access to contraception than ever before. Some folk believe this is to down to increased social media use; others believe it’s because young peope lead busier lives these days or because they’re more health conscious. 

Over the last decade, there’s been an 8% increase in Brits choosing not to have sex

So how does London fit into all of this? A 2023 survey of 2,000 people by dating app Dua found that while the number of people choosing not to have sex across Britain ‘had increased from 12 per cent to 20 percent’ in ten years, London was still the ‘least celibate’ city in the country – with only seven per cent of people abstaining from sex compared to the most celibate, Leicester, at 28 percent. It might not come as a surprise: Londoners generally have a reputation for having pretty positive attitudes to sexual liberation. (Just look at the amount of sex-positive parties out there: including Torture Garden, queer-focused Joyride and Klub Verboten.) 

Where does this leave us? It’s hard to tell if Londoners are actually having less sex – but if we are, it’s probably representative of a wider, generational shift. Besides: what happens in the bedroom stays in the bedroom, and all that.

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