Warning: This article contains content of a sexual nature that is intended for adults only
It was the place for threesomes, polyamory and kink – but now Feeld is becoming mainstream. So what happened when Jane Mulkerrins signed up?
It is not yet 7pm on a warm Monday evening in September and the queue for tonight’s event is already hundreds strong, snaking along the crash barriers and stretching up Euston Road.
Inside the Double Standard – the vast ground-floor bar of London’s hip Standard hotel – preparations for the party include large bowls of coloured badges with which guests can silently signal their intentions: yellow means “open to friends only”; red is “open to lovers only”; and blue is “open to both”. There are also stickers with more specificity, including a black one that says “kink”, a pink “LGBTQ+” one and an orange one that says “poly” (polyamory).
At 7pm, when the partygoers stream in, most head straight for the badges and stickers, even before the free drinks. Mostly aged from their late twenties to mid-forties, it’s a notably mixed crowd, both in gender and style. There are women in neat floral dresses, and a few in fetish-lite garb, clean-cut blokes, blokes with beards and a lot of tattoos and edgy haircuts.
If ever a surefire sign were needed that Feeld – hitherto regarded as a niche app for swingers, threesomes and those for whom latex is a lifestyle choice – has now gone fully mainstream, tonight’s social, a free monthly event put on by the app for its members (and replicated in cities including New York, Sydney, Amsterdam and Toronto), is surely it.
Launched in 2014 by twentysomething graphic designers Dimo Trifonov and Ana Kirova after they decided to open up their own relationship (Kirova was attracted to a woman but, instead of breaking up, she and Trifonov decided to explore extracurricular sexual relationships together, only to find that people on traditional dating apps were not so keen), until recently Feeld was still considered fringe – and a bit filthy. Certainly, it was not an app you’d publicly admit to meeting your partner on.
In the three years from January 2020 to January 2023, however, UK users have increased by 480 per cent, are now second only to the US in volume, and make up the fastest-growing market, with an 80 per cent increase in users year on year.
Only 23 per cent of UK users are now in couples (compared with 35 per cent globally) and 75 per cent are single, though notably, only 3 per cent of UK users express that they are looking to date monogamously.
I first dipped into the app in 2018 as part of my research for a book (still unwritten) on polyamory. I like to think I’m open-minded but, after demands for intimate pictures from terrifying couples, I ran for the hills.
Five years on, it could not feel more different. Yes, there are still plenty of couples openly seeking “unicorns” (single women who want to sleep with a male-female couple, so-called because of their apparent scarcity), as well as self-professed “doms” (the bossy ones) and those whose stated preferences include choking, “being humiliated and degraded”, “submissive female slaves”, “cockhold” (not cuckold, as I originally thought, although there are loads of blokes on Feeld into that too), and “women with a frank lust for a man with a big appendage” (measurements are kindly provided).
However, these are now drastically outnumbered by all the moderate-sounding singles who, alongside their stated desires such as “sensual, casual, FWB” (friends with benefits) – side note, launching oneself on Feeld requires looking up a lot of acronyms at first – also enthuse about their love of photography, museums and hiking. There are still plenty of people describing themselves as pansexual, gynosexual and heteroflexible, but also a vast number stating simply “straight”. Feeld, I quickly find, is no longer the online equivalent of the sex room in a Berlin nightclub.
I meet Kirova, now 31 and CEO of Feeld since 2021 (she and Trifonov are still together, but he has stepped back from the company), on the ninth floor of the Standard, with views of St Pancras station across the street. Bulgarian-born and a graduate of the University of Greenwich, she now lives in Porto in Portugal – Feeld’s workforce is entirely remote – but is in town for the social later tonight.
I have nothing against monogamy. But it’s the only relationship style we grow up being told about.
She agrees that “Feeld now is not what it was two years ago, and probably won’t be the same two years from now”, because, she says, “The world changes really fast, and we change fast.”
She believes that part of Feeld’s rapid and recent boom is thanks to the pandemic. “We were alone in our houses, isolated, facing the reality of our lives and the decisions we’ve made. And many people went through a transformation in how they look at their relationships.”
Then there is the influence of Gen Z, with their fluid ideas of gender, sexuality and relationships. A third of UK Feeld users are aged 26-30, and another 18 per cent are 18-25, making this cohort a sizeable chunk of the demographic and thereby heavily directing the language, terminology and behaviours found on it.
But while Kirova believes that Feeld is mirroring and reflecting societal changes, it is simultaneously, she thinks, helping to drive them. The section in which users state their desires – from a list that includes bondage, watching, group, texting, couples, singles, foreplay and fun – “has changed how people perceive what their desires are”, she says. “You build comfort with that experience of saying, ‘This is what I’d like to do,’ or, ‘This is what I’m curious about.’ No one ever offered that space for people before on such a mainstream platform.” And there is no doubt that Feeld is now firmly mainstream. “Definitely,” nods Kirova.
She talks about “technical debt” – the problems that occur when fast, simple software solutions are used at the expense of longer-term growth. “You build an app for 100 people but 1000 people use it, and you patch things up but it’s not sustainable. And then it becomes 10,000 and the problem grows exponentially.”
From a user’s side, this means the app is glitchy and often crashes. Is Feeld a victim of its own success? “Yeah, in a way,” she says. “The app needs to get up to speed.”
Unlike other apps, there’s no mindless Yes/No scrolling. If someone takes your fancy on Feeld, you can give them a like – they can then see your profile and that you like them. If they like you back, you’re connected and can start chatting. You also get one “ping” a day, which sends your like straight to the top of the pile, letting someone know immediately that you’re interested.
I’m baffled, as I can’t get a single bloke even to respond to my overtures on Hinge, but I’ve been on the app less than a month and I’ve had almost 2000 “likes”.
My ego suitably stroked, a couple of weeks into navigating the app I meet up with Pete, a 29-year-old designer. The messaging has been easy and engaging and he comes across as bright, curious, confident and relaxed.
In person, he’s very tall, handsome and easygoing. He’s a little earnest for me, and I’m not sure how much I actually fancy him but, when he invites me back to his flat, I figure it can’t do any harm.
Thankfully there’s no choking or attempts to entice me into a threesome or becoming a “submissive female slave” as per other Feeld profiles. If anything, it’s all very vanilla.
A week later, after a lot of pithy, quick-witted texting, I meet up with Tim, a 28-year-old architect. I have high hopes for Tim, whose messages have been the perfect mix of charming, funny and flirty. When we meet at the station, however, my heart sinks. He looks so young that I feel like I’m going on a date with the work experience.
He is lovely company, but I have to do all the heavy lifting – the banter and wit that had been so compelling on WhatsApp are absent IRL.
What I am seeing now is people who are not kink-adjacent but just want to try something new.
When he asks sweetly if he can kiss me, I say, yes, of course (God loves a trier). But, in the recent words of Trinny Woodall, there is no “hello from down there” and – feeling like I am kicking a puppy – I dispatch him back to London on a late train in monsoon-like rain.
I will admit, having just turned 46, perhaps it is finally time to stop dating men in their twenties. But what’s notable about these interactions is that, the day after our dates, I’m able to message them, thank them for a great evening, tell them (honestly) that I enjoyed getting to know them a bit, but sorry, I don’t think the chemistry is really there for me. There’s no awkwardness on my part or affront on theirs, and there’s certainly no question of ghosting. It’s all so transparent, honest and emotionally literate.
“There is a sense of respect and openness at the core [of Feeld], but no real expectations around how you should be,” Kirova says. She thinks the more traditional apps have “a very transactional nature”, whereas while there is plenty of casual sex on offer on Feeld – including FWB and ONS (one-night stands) – it’s a more deliberate and conscious sort of casual sex, with an awful lot more communication, both before and after. Smart-casual sex, if you like.
Kirova uses the app herself – “I got a ping today, but I haven’t checked it out yet” – and is “currently” dating only men.
She and Trifonov have, she says, “been opening and closing [our relationship] over the years, but it’s been quite organic. I travel all the time and he’s left alone in Porto – he doesn’t like travelling that much. We have a lot of respect and openness for each other, and we just do what feels right.
“I have nothing against monogamy,” she adds. “But it’s the only relationship style we grow up being told about.”
At the party at the Standard I meet numerous people who feel the same way, including Nick and Gemma, a couple in their late twenties who live in south London and are exploring the idea of dating other people together. They’ve been using Feeld for a few weeks (“We haven’t actually done anything yet,” Gemma says), and this is the first in-person party they’ve been to. “It is – somewhat oddly – a lot more respectful than other apps,” Nick says. “And even though it is a place where you’d think people were looking for hook-ups, it feels more like a place of genuine, honest connection.”
Hannah, 33, and L, 35, are both longtime Feeld fans, but are finding there are downsides to the app hitting the mainstream. “What I am seeing now is people who are not kink-adjacent but just want to try something new,” says L, who has been a member since 2019. “And that’s good and bad. There are so many more people, but not necessarily the right people. There’s more noise, and it feels like the site has become diluted.”
She’s not wrong. There is a minor but discernible cache of men in my feed who appear to have got lost en route to Tinder. Their brief bios always (often only) include their height – not something Feeld even asks for – and their pictures generally feature them lifting weights or fish, wearing Lycra or no top at all – or, in one case, a tracksuit top prominently embellished with “UK national fencing team”. The swordsman gags write themselves, but I doubt he’d get them.
Sometimes, however, the Tinder interlopers are trickier to spot. I’ve been chatting pleasantly to a 32-year-old investment banker (username: Captain D – I know), who has the most astonishing upper body in his pictures, and who has promised that I’ll be “impressed by what’s going on with my lower body too”. That won’t happen now because yesterday he sent me an unsolicited dick pic, which is very much not in the consensual, respectful spirit of Feeld.
As I chat with more people on the app, I’m finding myself reconsidering what I would be up for. FWB and ONS, sure. But poly? After a messy entanglement eight years ago, I’d thought that wasn’t for me.
But then I find myself chatting to Nathan, a 36-year-old pilot, who is funny, quick and self-deprecating and whose biog states that he’s in a “happy poly/ENM [ethical non-monogamy] relationship”. We’re planning to get together when schedules permit, so who knows? I’m very busy, so a part-time lover might be exactly what I need.
Does Kirova worry, however, that Feeld’s success will also be its downfall, that mass popularity will dilute the very characteristics that make it so appealing?
“I don’t worry about it, but I am alert to it,” she says. “But I think the thing that would dilute it is not the numbers; it’s the behaviours. So we have behaviours we encourage, behaviours we tolerate, behaviours we grow.”
In that spirit, while I’m still struggling to wean myself off twentysomethings, there’s progress. I’m meeting one later this week, who’s made his intentions abundantly clear and has already sent me raunchy pictures – but he asked very nicely for permission first.
Written by: Jane Mulkerrins
© The Times of London