CTRL+ALT+Desire: India's secret affair market booms as people flock to dating apps, hotels and detectives

Muzaffarpur: A husband suspects his wife of weekend escapades. He hires a private investigator, who poses as a milkman and stations near their home. The wife steps out at dawn and returns at noon. A quick trace of her route ends up at a guest house, contradicting her claims of a temple visit. She has been meeting a former acquaintance who has re-entered her life via Instagram DMs.

Indore: A woman discovers her husband’s affair when she happens to check into the same hotel as him in Mumbai. She is there for a cosmetic surgery. He is with a colleague.

When Coldplay’s kiss cam caught former Astronomer CEO Andy Byron canoodling with its then HR chief Kristin Cabot, it felt like a spectacle of modern infidelity: sudden, public and viral. India’s version is quieter, but no less dramatic. From small towns to mega cities, temptation knows no bounds. And now there is enough data to back this up.

Gleeden, an extramarital dating app based in France, says its India user base shot up 270% in 2024, clocking 3 million users, which have now gone up to 3.5 million. Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai lead the charts, but Jaipur, Lucknow, Bhopal, Chandigarh and Vadodara are catching up.

Ashley Madison, a Canadian dating platform for the married with 85 million active users, now counts India among its top five global markets. It recently flagged Kanchipuram as a newly emerging “cheating hub” based on a surge in active user sign-ups.

Infidelity is no longer the stuff of salacious gossip. It is an economy. From day-stay hotels to encrypted dating apps, therapy sessions under pseudonyms, and private detectives being hired for “loyalty tests”, a full-fledged market is thriving for cheaters.
EMOTIONAL TRIPPING

If affairs once meant lipstick stains and latenight alibis, today they are likely to begin with a double-tap on Instagram or an encrypted chat on a dating app.

“Cheating is a symptom of needs feeling unmet— emotional, physical and even spiritual needs that are desired within a relationship which often go unexpressed,” says Kavita Jhaveri, a relationship coach in Ohio, US.

This territory of texting, flirting, sharing memes and late-night venting is where modern infidelity often brews. “Digital intimacy complicates things,” says Shivani Misri Sadhoo, marriage counsellor and founder of Saarthi Counselling Services, Delhi. “The question is: ‘Would you be okay if your partner read these messages?’ If not, there’s usually a boundary being crossed.”

Platforms like Gleeden and Ashley Madison have carved a niche in this grey zone. According to Gleeden’s recent IPSOS-backed survey, 61% of Indian users believe monogamy is a social imposition, and 41% think it goes against human nature. Interestingly, while the platform is known for facilitating extramarital connections, its users — especially Indian women—are not always seeking physical encounters.

“Indian users, especially women, primarily seek virtual connections,” says Sybil Shiddell, India country manager, Gleeden. “Physical affairs may follow, but they are rarely the starting point. Most of the time, it’s about feeling heard.”

In Ashley Madison’s YouGov survey, 53% in India admitted to having had an affair, the highest among all countries surveyed.

Paul Keable, chief strategy officer, Ashley Madison, says, “Women who join the platform are often looking to outsource elements of physical intimacy missing in their marriage. For men, it’s more about emotional validation—the feeling of being wanted and desired. Many don’t even intend to follow through on the physical aspect.”

The spectrum of what counts as cheating ranges from flirty texts to full-blown affairs, but the real rupture often lies in secrecy and emotional withdrawal.
SALACIOUS SMALL TOWNS

Extramarital dating is not just a big city phenomenon. “I am seeing more clients from smaller towns who are involved in or impacted by extramarital relationships,” says Deepali Batra, a Delhi-based senior clinical psychologist and relationship therapist. “In close-knit and traditional communities, emotional expression is usually dismissed. Marital norms are rigid. Many of these affairs don’t happen because someone wants to rebel—they usually come from deep emotional loneliness.”

That void is increasingly being filled by those across a screen. Smartphones, encrypted messaging and dating platforms have quietly expanded the emotional and romantic horizons of small-town India.

“These tools allow people to talk privately, build emotional bonds and have online relationships they might not have tried before,” says Batra. “It is easier to start and maintain secret affairs now—but also harder to hide them”.

“I counsel couples from cities like Bhopal and Udaipur where the woman earns as much as the man, is digitally savvy and isn’t willing to live in quiet dissatisfaction,” says Nidhi Vaswan, a Gujarat-based marriage counsellor.

Gleeden says 40% of its new Indian users come from non-metros while Ashley Madison has had a sharp surge in first-time users from small towns.

Lawyers are noticing, too. Mumbai-based divorce attorney Vandana Shah says that over the past decade, cases of infidelity have “become more evenly spread” between metros and smaller towns.

In smaller towns, infidelity often stays hidden until it erupts in violence. In Jaipur, a woman and her lover were reportedly caught on CCTV camera, carrying her husband’s body on a bike. In Guwahati, a man was arrested for allegedly killing his wife on suspicion of an affair. In Meerut, a man was murdered after he reportedly discovered his wife’s affair but refused to divorce her. In Ludhiana, a man having an extramarital relationship reportedly killed his wife and dumped the body in a well.

DISCREET ECONOMY
Behind every affair, there is an ecosystem making it possible. Apps, on top of this infidelity pyramid, are digital enablers of a new intimacy.

On Gleeden, users spend credits to initiate conversations—five credits per message. The minimum in-app purchase of 30 credits costs ₹1,850. “Men make up around 65% of the community, while women account for 35%,” says Gleeden’s Shiddell.

Most Indian users turn on the “invisible mode” and use encrypted chat features, both of which are among the platform’s most accessed offerings. “Privacy is paramount in India,” says Shiddell. “Discretion isn’t just a preference; it is a necessity.”

Ashley Madison reports a similar pattern. “Discretion is something our members value everywhere, but in India, where stigma, surveillance and patriarchy intersect, it is even more critical,” says Keable.

On the app, men are required to purchase credit packages starting at ₹599 for 100 credits. Eight credits are required to send a connection request. After a woman user accepts a request, chatting is free.

This discreet economy doesn’t stop at apps. Hourly hotel apps too have found a niche market. Aggregators such as Brevistay, MiStay and HourlyRooms offer no-questions-asked rooms for as little as ₹500 for a three-hour stay.

Brevistay, founded in 2016 in Noida, has raised ₹3.3 crore and operates in 70+ cities. It generated a revenue of ₹8.84 crore for FY24. Backed by ah! Ventures and Axilor Ventures, MiStay has raised ₹1.92 crore and is valued at ₹11.7 crore, according to Traxcn. Platforms like MakeMyTrip also now offer couple-friendly, hourly stays at hotels like Pullman, Hyatt and Radisson.

Meanwhile, detective agencies routinely offer “pre-marital background checks” and “partner loyalty tests”. A Delhi-based private investigation firm reveals that where such services once cost ₹20,000, they now charge anywhere between ₹50,000 and ₹2 lakh, depending on the complexity of surveillance. GPS trackers, phone mirroring and even decoy setups where actors test a partner’s loyalty are in the standard toolkit.

Therapists, too, are part of the loop. As Sadhoo explains, “Increasingly, individuals seek counselling not necessarily to end an extramarital relationship, but to cope with the emotional complexity it brings.”
SHADES OF GREY

In India’s courts, infidelity occupies a grey space.

While adultery was decriminalised by the Supreme Court (SC) in 2018, it remains a valid civil ground for divorce. “Family courts are flooded with screenshots, WhatsApp chats, hotel bills, even GPS logs,” says divorce lawyer Shah. “None of this always proves physical intimacy, but it builds a narrative of conduct. It impacts alimony, custody and public sympathy.”
Just last month, the Chhattisgarh High Court ruled that a woman proven to have committed adultery could not claim maintenance. But the rules are far from uniform.

In Ahmedabad, a local court awarded maintenance and compensation to a woman despite allegations of infidelity, citing her husband’s abuse and dismissing the adultery defence as it was raised too late in the proceedings.

In a recent ruling, the SC clarified that decisions around alimony must consider multiple factors: the duration of marriage, earning potential, standard of living and, importantly, conduct, including infidelity or cruelty.

Digital evidence has become central. WhatsApp chats, shared locations and even phone metadata are routinely submitted as evidence in family courts. Yet, legal clarity hasn’t caught up with digital complexity.

Last month, the Delhi High Court dismissed a plea by an army officer seeking hotel CCTV footage to prove his wife’s alleged affair, ruling, “The right to privacy extends even to an unfaithful spouse.”

As marriage becomes more fragile and data trails more telling, courts are increasingly tasked with interpreting not just actions, but emotional context.

In Gleeden’s survey, 58% respondents said they would rather be unfaithful than pursue a divorce — a number that rises to 60% among married respondents. The survey added another layer: 35% said they are in open relationships or willing to consider one.

“Infidelity today is less of a moral scandal and more of a relational crisis,” says Sadhoo. “The question isn’t just who cheated but why the relationship stopped feeling like a place to stay.”