Am I the bad sex neighbor?

Investigating the unspoken etiquette of loud sex in the city that never sleeps

I’m not proud to admit I have loud sex, but I’m not ashamed of it either. In New York City, you hear things: sirens, subway buskers, the occasional orgasm. You learn to live with it—unless, apparently, you’re my upstairs neighbor.

It started with a text: “Can you please keep it down?” A fair request—except it was 2 p.m. on Valentine’s Day. I apologized and went about my life. I play music, I bought a white noise machine, and I try to keep moaning to a minimum. So when the next text came—demanding I stop having sex in my own home—I was stunned.

“This is beyond disrespectful,” it read. “I’ve already asked once. If it happens again, I’ll be filing a formal noise complaint.”

The next morning, I craft an apologetic text—even offering to buy her a drink so we can talk it over in person. I say things about “pinpointing the exact noise threshold” and “understanding her sleep schedule” and “finding a long-term solution,” tactfully avoiding the three words that would solve this problem immediately: “noise-canceling headphones.”

Her response is swift: “Hearing things like voices, TV, and music is just part of being neighbors. But there is no workable decibel level for sex.”

This is, technically speaking, not true. According to Kings County noise code, anything up to 55 decibels is fine. At first, I was thrilled—a solid defense! But then I looked up what 55 decibels actually sounds like: “background music in a quiet office,” “a running refrigerator,” and “moderate rainfall.” For context, the loudest recorded fart hit 118.1 decibels.

Okay, I thought—maybe I am having sex too loud. But if my upstairs neighbor hears a little bump in the night, isn’t that just part of life in New York?

A Noise Issue—or Something Deeper?

“Oh yeah, I hear my neighbor orgasm every night and every morning,” says my friend M. “It’s technically not wrong, but it does disturb me.”

Another friend, L, tells me she mistook her neighbor’s house-shaking orgasms for a nearby train—until she heard a girl’s moans. “The worst part is, I’m pretty sure she was faking it.”

Others say they’d gladly trade the sounds of sex for their neighbor’s taste in music. “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks because neighbor paces his apartment from midnight to 6 a.m., blasting Trey Songz,” A says.

This is just to say that when my neighbor texts back, I’m pretty sure she’s being unreasonable. “When the volume can’t be basically zero, I’d ask that you time it for when I’m traveling,” she writes, and follows up with her schedule for the month—down to the exact day and hour I’m permitted to have sex.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I say, handing my boyfriend the phone. “What does she want us to do, make a shared Google calendar?”

In response, I point out that coordinating my sex life around her travel schedule isn’t exactly feasible. “It’s not feasible in general, though, to make a lot of noise when having sex in an apartment building,” she fires back immediately. “I think it’s irrational to think anything above a whisper should fly when you have neighbors who can hear everything.”

It’s clear from her response that the problem isn’t just the volume—it’s the nature of the noise itself. It begs the question: In a city of thin walls, when does one person’s privacy interfere with another person’s pleasure? And if there’s an unspoken etiquette to apartment sex, what are the rules?

Sex vs. Silence: An Urban Battlefield

In search of answers, I posed the question to my audience—and received dozens of responses from warring camps: the sex-havers and the sex-hearers, each with their own complaints.

“When the people upstairs fucked, I could hear every breath and every movement,” K says. “It was as if I was in the room with them, sitting in the proverbial cuck chair.”

Others had the opposite issue: “The couple downstairs would imitate the moans of me and my boyfriend when we were having sex,” E recalls. “Then they’d act like nothing happened when we saw each other the next day.”

Some at-home workers complain of their neighbor’s afternoon rendezvous—while others view them as a welcome distraction from their 9-5s. “I’ve never met my upstairs neighbor, but from the sounds of it, he’s being railed within an inch of his life,” says N. “My wife and I work from home, and always stop what we’re doing to listen. Partially for fun, and partially because it’s so loud that I couldn’t possibly think about spreadsheets.”

One acquaintance even offered to send me a voice memo of her neighbors fucking: “The woman was a theater director, and she projected every single word. The sex and the fights were so loud, I know they broke up on Valentine’s Day because they were poly and the guy brought one of his girlfriends to a dinner she was also at.”

It’s clear: many of us know way too much about each other. But if we’re willing to accept a stranger’s loud conversations and late-night TV binge, why does the sound of their pleasure push us over the edge? And if your neighbor has a problem with your sex life, should you really have to censor yourself to keep the peace?

For many, the answer is no. “I believe the only kind of sex worth having is good sex,” T says. “My moans are surely annoying, but I can’t help it. It sounds selfish, but this is New York, after all. You don’t live here for the quiet.”

Sex, Sound, and the City

She’s right: According to a 2024 survey, more than two-thirds of New Yorkers hear their neighbors getting it on. Nineteen percent are jealous; 19 percent are annoyed; 11 percent are disgusted; 16 percent are aroused.

Most never complain. Until the pandemic, that is, when 311 received a surge in sex-related reports. And it wasn’t all Karens upset about vanilla sex:

“Some guy is singing Jingle Balls at the top of his voice while another person is screaming, ‘Yes daddy, come down my chimney,’” a complaint from Dec. 23, 2021, read. “I can hear an obese gay man splashing his Latino lover’s cheeks with his man syrup,” a particularly poetic Brooklynite claimed. One woman said it was “impossible to access her apartment without walking through eight to nine people having an orgy in the staircase,” while another complained of his neighbor making the sounds of a “sexual-tyrannosaurus.”

After reading the 311 complaints, I’m pretty sure my neighbor could have it worse. And despite hours of trawling through legal documents and city data, I’ve yet to find anyone who’s been persecuted for their crimes. What I did learn is that the walls are thin, sound carries, and there’s very little any of us can do about it.

Maybe I’m the bad sex neighbor; maybe she’s the prude next door. But New York City is filthy, lawless, and loud. And if we’re both paying thousands to live in the city that never sleeps—well, why should we?

So, have you ever been the bad sex neighbor, or lived next to one? If there’s an unspoken etiquette to apartment sex, what are the rules? And if your neighbor is ruining your life—or your sex life—should it be your responsibility to change, or theirs?

Drop your takes in the comments, or spill your stories anonymously HERE.