China's Forum Confessions: What Married Men Won't Say Out Loud
On Hupu’s Walking Street forum, a popular online gathering place for mostly male users in China, a 38-year-old company executive posted a confession that quickly drew hundreds of replies. Married for eight years, he wrote that he and his wife had slowly become “bunk-bed brothers” — roommates who share a home but rarely share a bed. He asked other married men aged 30 to 45, honestly and anonymously, how many times a month they were intimate with their wives. The thread, under a title that translates roughly to “Married men confess: how many times a month do you still ‘hand in your homework’?”, became a rare public airing of a subject that is usually kept behind closed doors.
The original poster did not blame his wife. Instead, he described a pattern that many respondents recognised: after the couple’s child began sleeping alone, the couple drifted into separate routines. When things did not go smoothly, he said, he found himself avoiding intimacy altogether — staying late at the office, accepting dinner invitations, pretending to be asleep. He reassured himself that this was normal for an “old married couple”, but the post made clear he was not entirely convinced.
The replies, which ranged from boastful to resigned, formed a kind of informal survey. Some men claimed they were intimate three times a week; others admitted to once or twice a month, to sleeping in separate rooms, or to what one called “quarterly settlements”. The most striking feature of the thread was not the numbers but the tone: few people were joking. Many described exhaustion from work and childcare, a loss of privacy in homes shared with grandparents, and a gradual awkwardness that neither partner knew how to break.
Chinese online forums have long been a place where people discuss marriage pressures — bride prices, tensions with in-laws, and the cost of raising a child. But physical intimacy is rarely discussed so openly. The thread’s popularity suggests that many couples feel isolated by the expectation that a busy family life naturally cools a marriage, and that admitting otherwise would be embarrassing.
The post also touched on a quieter anxiety: the fear of being judged. Several commenters said they would never raise the subject with friends, let alone a doctor. One wrote that the thread was the first time he had seen other men describe the same experience. Another said he had shown the post to his wife, and they had talked properly for the first time in months.
For all its bluntness, the discussion was not without warmth. The original poster said he still loved his wife and wanted to fix things. Suggestions ranged from scheduling time alone together to simply talking more. Nobody offered a miracle cure. But the thread itself — a small, anonymous corner of the Chinese internet — may have done some good simply by letting married men admit that “bunk-bed brothers” is not the only way to live.