4 Million Indians On Gleeden: What Lust Stories 3 Gets Right About Loneliness Inside Marriage

News lifestyle relationship 4 Million Indians On Gleeden: What Lust Stories 3 Gets Right About Loneliness Inside Marriage

4 Million Indians On Gleeden: What Lust Stories 3 Gets Right About Loneliness Inside Marriage

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Last Updated: September 21, 2026, 17:42 IST

Padma and Shonali may joke about swapping husbands, but Lust Stories 3 really asks what happens when people stop feeling desired by the partners they built their lives with

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4 Million Indians On Gleeden: What Lust Stories 3 Gets Right About Loneliness Inside Marriage

There is a point in Vikramaditya Motwane’s segment in Lust Stories 3 when the problem is no longer simply that two married women are not having enough sex. It is that they have started wondering whether their husbands even see them as women anymore. It is comical, sure, but also very revealing.

Padma, played by Radhika Apte, and Shonali, played by Konkona Sen Sharma, are friends, colleagues, neighbours and mothers in their 40s. Their marriages have settled into the familiar machinery of middle-class family life: husbands, children, work, meals and routines. Desire, as society tells you, sits somewhere at the bottom of the list.

So they contemplate swapping husbands. It is an absurd proposition. It is also the film’s way of getting at something considerably less absurd – what happens when a marriage continues to function long after intimacy has stopped being part of it?

The women haven’t suddenly developed a taste for swinging. They get to this outrageous idea by discussing what has gone missing from their marriages. Inspired by the Korean dramas they watch, Shonali comes up with the idea of swapping husbands during a weekend away. Padma, initially embarrassed and reluctant, is gradually pulled into the plan.

The segment soon becomes a story about two 40-year-old mothers who have reached a point where they simply want to feel wanted again. And while you may think this is just a ‘metro’ town problem, look outside. Even outside Netflix, there is a growing digital ecosystem built around people looking for something outside their marriages.

Gleeden, a dating platform designed for people seeking discreet relationships, says its Indian user base crossed 4 million in 2026. According to data shared by the platform, 65% of its Indian users are men and 35% are women, while the majority are married or in long-term relationships. The platform also reported a 148% increase in women users over the previous two years.

Those numbers cannot tell us how many people are actually having affairs. Signing up for an app is not the same as meeting someone, having sex, or ending a marriage. But they do offer a glimpse into the size of the audience willing to look beyond the traditional boundaries of a relationship. And what some of these users say they are looking for makes the Lust Stories 3 connection more interesting.

It Isn’t Always About Sex

A 2025 Gleeden survey conducted with Ipsos found that 51% of respondents said they lacked an emotional connection with their partners, despite describing themselves as happy and sexually satisfied in their relationships. Another 42% cited a lack of excitement and thrill, while 38% pointed to physical intimacy. Among Gen X respondents, the emotional disconnect figure rose to 55%. The finding is almost more uncomfortable than a straightforward “sexless marriage" statistic. You can have a marriage that works on paper and still feel lonely inside it.

For Madhu (name-changed), who lives in Kolkata, joining Gleeden came from the same place. “My marriage is not unhappy in the way people imagine an unhappy marriage. We manage the house, we take care of our children, we have friends, and we have built a life together. But somewhere along the way, we stopped being a couple and became a team. We actually did not sleep together for over a year before I decided to join the app. I actually just wanted to be flirted with. I never wanted to destroy my family. I wanted to know whether I could still feel excitement, attraction, and connection with another person, and whether there was something amiss with me only," she says.

You can share a home, raise children, split bills, attend family functions and sleep next to the same person for years, while feeling that the part of the relationship that once made you feel attractive, interesting or wanted has disappeared. That is essentially the space Motwane’s story plays in.

The women are not introduced as people whose marriages are collapsing. They are ordinary suburban wives whose sexual frustration has become one more thing they have learnt to live around. The comedy comes from the absurdity of their proposed solution, but underneath it is a fairly recognisable problem: they have stopped talking about desire until the only way to talk about it is through a wildly impractical fantasy.

The Secret Dating Economy Is Getting Bigger

Gleeden’s numbers are not the only indication that married Indians are experimenting with relationships outside marriage. Ashley Madison, another platform built around discreet relationships for married people, identified India as one of its fastest-growing markets. In data released in May 2026, Kancheepuram saw the maximum number of sign-ups. This is the city’s second consecutive top rank on the list. In 2025 too, it was identified as the top spot for interest in extra-marital affairs.

And in 2026, according to another survey by Ashley Madison, 45% women said they reached their sexual prime at age 40 or older. Again, this is platform data, not a census of infidelity in India. It reflects people who have chosen to use a particular service and cannot be used to claim that one city or demographic “cheats more" than another. But it does challenge the idea that extramarital dating is exclusively a metropolitan phenomenon or something that belongs to a particular kind of marriage.

Roy, another Bengaluru-based working professional, also joined a discreet dating app last year. The decision to tell his wife is still in the works. “People assume you join these apps because you hate your marriage. That wasn’t true for me. I love my wife, we have a good life and I have no plans to leave. But after years of the same routine, the excitement of talking to a stranger can become addictive. Sometimes you don’t want a new life. You just want something that feels new," he adds.

The market exists because there is demand for it. And increasingly, that demand appears to include companionship, attention and novelty alongside sex. There are now apps where couples can sign up to look for a third partner, a one-night arrangement, swaps and much more. And when they are consenting adults, there isn’t really an ethical problem.

Gleeden reported that Indian users spend an average of one to one-and-a-half hours a day chatting on the platform, with activity peaking between noon and 3pm and again between 10pm and midnight. Bengaluru accounted for 18% of users, followed by Hyderabad at 17%, Delhi at 11%, Mumbai at 9% and Pune at 7%, according to the platform’s 2026 data. Smaller cities including Lucknow, Chandigarh, Surat, Coimbatore, Patna and Guwahati were also part of its expanding user base.

Also Read: India’s Dating Map: The One South Indian State That Searches For Grindr Vs North That Chases Shaadi

For Parth and Ritika (names changed), a Bengaluru-based couple in their 30s who practise consensual partner swapping, the open relationship aspect of their arrangement was easy to manage once expectations had been clearly communicated. “We didn’t start swapping because our relationship was failing, or anything was boring. Quite the opposite really. We were comfortable enough with each other to talk about fantasies we had never discussed before. The important thing for us was that nothing happened behind the other’s back. We decide together, we have boundaries and either of us can say no. For us, it became about curiosity and trust rather than replacing each other."

The Loneliness Inside A Marriage

This is where Lust Stories 3 is more interesting than its premise suggests. While the treatment and the resolution were not as fun as the buildup, it does prompt a cultural conversation. Padma and Shonali are not teenagers discovering sex. They are married women who have already spent years inside relationships. But like Shonali says, women are refusing to be reduced to a trope by men who no longer desire them. That is also why the reported rise in female users on Gleeden is worth looking at without turning it into a simplistic story about women “choosing cheating". Women now make up 35% of the platform’s Indian users, according to Gleeden, and their participation has risen sharply over two years. It does not establish why every woman joins. It does, however, complicate the old assumption that desire, even if it is outside marriage, is primarily a male pursuit. That physical intimacy is not overrated. Like Vidya Balan once said on Koffee With Karan: “Women want it, need it and enjoy it, as much as men."

Also Read: 66% Of Women Want Men To Make The First Move: Why Dating Apps Are Rewriting The Rules In 2026

Motwane’s story does not justify infidelity, or even the comical solution the women resort to to spice up their marriage. What it does is not reduce their idea to the lack of just sex. It is the lack of desire. The desire to feel alive inside a marriage too. Lust Stories 3 gets one thing right: the loneliness partners can feel inside marriage. Even Padma’s husband acknowledged noticing her in the ambulance. His desire (and the lack of it) is as apparent as hers. It shows how two people stop touching each other long after they have stopped really talking. That loneliness of marriage isn’t about being alone, but with someone who no longer makes you feel seen.

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Quick Answers Powered by Ask News18 What is the release date and streaming platform for Lust Stories 3? Lust Stories 3 premiered globally on Netflix on September 18, 2026, as the third instalment of the popular anthology franchise. It features four distinct stories exploring relationships, desire, and intimacy directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao, Shakun Batra, and Vishal Bhardwaj. How many Indian users does Gleeden have in 2026 and what are their demographics? The discreet dating platform Gleeden reported that its Indian user base crossed 4 million in 2026. According to platform data, 65% of these users are men and 35% are women, with the majority being married or in long-term relationships. Furthermore, the platform noted a 148% increase in female users over the preceding two years. What core themes do Vikramaditya Motwane's segment in Lust Stories 3 explore? Vikramaditya Motwane's segment features Radhika Apte and Konkona Sen Sharma as middle-class married friends in their 40s who contemplate swapping husbands after experiencing emotional distance and a loss of desire. The story examines the quiet loneliness that can develop inside a functioning marriage long after intimacy and the feeling of being wanted have faded. Powered by Ask News18

About the Author Mallika Bhagat Deputy News Editor Mallika Bhagat is a Deputy News Editor at News18, where she leads the Lifestyle and Viral desks. A seasoned journalist and content strategist, she brings a decade of high-impact experience from India’... Read More

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First Published: September 21, 2026, 17:42 IST