Neighbours more than ‘just good friends’ as 3m of us want to romp with next door

Alison Friar, 34, met her husband after he moved in next door as millions of Brits want to pop round for more than just a ‘cup of sugar’

Neighbours are more than ‘just good friends’ for around 3m adults – who admit to romping with someone next-door. A poll of 2,000 Brits found that 5% confessed they’d ‘got it on’ with someone who lived next-door to them.

That works out at around 3m Brits who pop round for more than just a ‘cup of sugar’. Researchers at Colony – flexible workplace specialists – also found younger Brits were more likely to have bedded a neighbour.

A total of 7% of Gen Zers had romped with a neighbour, compared to 4% of millennials, and 3% of those aged 40 and over. Alison Friar, 34, of St Albans, Herts, said she met her now husband after he moved in next door to her in 2019. She said: “I had been living in the same house for just over 10 years and my old neighbours had just moved to a retirement home.

“I was really sad to see them go, but then this guy turned up and it was genuinely a case of our eyes meeting and both of us feeling the same thing.

“He had asked me out on a date by the end of his first week in the house, and two years later we both sold up, got married and moved to a four-bed house along the road.”

The study found that the most common place to meet a lover or partner was through friends, 16%, work, 15%, or in the pub, with 13%. A total of 12% had met on a dating app, with 10% meeting at college or university, 6% of social media, and 5% through hobbies.

A spokesman for Colony said although meeting at work or through friends was the most common way for romance to blossom, being neighbours was also ‘up there’.

He said: “Workplace romances accounted for 15% of those polled, but we also found that just over 3% had fallen in love with a next-door neighbour.”