After the buzz about Bumble, Tinder, Hinge and category specific like Grindr, Muzz and SeniorMatch, there is Gleeden. Hence, what is Gleeden? It is a dating app designed for extramarital relationships and discreet meet-ups. It was launched in France, introduced in the market in 2009 and marketed as, ‘made by women, for women.’ What interesting is, it has significant number of users in India, making India one of its largest and fastest growing market. The surge in adoption of such dating app in urban India among married individuals could be a result of Supreme Court India’s 2018 judgment which decriminalized adultery, if adultery was a crime then who would have installed such an app.
Since, Gleeden is marketed as, ‘designed by women, for
women’, women use the service completely free of charge, while men purchase a
credit based subscription model to initiate charge. Even so, the overall user
ratio stands at 65% men and 35% women and the users’ ages are between 30 to 45.
Bengaluru has the highest user followed by Hyderabad and Delhi, showing the cities
is taking the lead, but some of the urban towns are fast catching up. A survey
was conducted to identify the primary motivators for using this app, the result
shows, loneliness, emotional neglect and time constraint caused by demanding
corporate schedule driving users to seek a digital escape. No wonder, the majority
of the users reside in the cities.
Let’s talk about the reaction of our society. Traditional
Indian society, conservative family groups, and moral watchdogs look at Gleeden
users with sharp condemnation. As marriage in India is widely regarded as a
scared union, a lifelong commitment, and using an app to facilitate affairs is
viewed as an outright subversion of family values. Sociologists and
relationship experts view the app’s popularity less as a moral failing and more
as a ‘mirror’ to the quiet cracks in modern urban marriages. While society
broadly judges any user, women face significantly harsher social policing and
shame than men if discovered. Relationship commentators point out that the
female surge highlights a silent shift where women are seeking emotional
fulfillment rather than staying stuck in lonely marriages.
I wondered what if both husband and wife are secretly in
Gleeden, what are the chances of getting caught? It seems the chances are slim
as the app prevents users from recognizing each other through a few strict features
like ‘private album system’ and yes of course, fake nicknames and blurred
geolocation. However, if a husband and a wife did come across each other’s
anonymous profiles, they wouldn’t know it was their spouse because to see the
clear photo, one would have to send a request to view the other’s ‘private album.’
But the ultimate irony is, if the spouse
accepts, they would both instantly see each other’s faces and realizes they are
both using this app to cheat. LOL! It will
be a mutual ‘checkmate’ scenario where neither person can easily blame the
other.
