‘I got addicted – I was spending 30 hours a week there’

For IT manager and bodybuilder Neil*, 29, saunas got too hot to handle

I first visited a sauna aged 18. A randy, inquisitive teen, I went one afternoon during a free period at university and ended up having a clumsy yet intoxicatingly exciting shag with a woman in her thirties. After that, I was hooked. I got into ‘cuckolding’ – sleeping with other men’s female partners, while they got off on the submissiveness of being forced to watch or taunting themselves imagining what was happening after I led their lover away to a private room. It made me feel powerful.

After a bad break-up aged 24, I used saunas to distract me from my heartache, but I became rather addicted: for three years, I went for 20 to 30 hours a week, before and after shifts at my job, often skipping social events to head to the spa.

It wasn’t only sex I went for. No one there knew who I was outside, so I could create a different personality: I could be more open and confident. A new version of Neil.

There was a clash with reality when I saw one of my bosses in the Jacuzzi, his wife being vigorously fingered by another man. He avoided me at the office from then on. I’m sure I lost a bonus because of it!

Eventually I got a promotion, and I found that the more responsibility I had in my professional life, the less I craved being dominant and hyper-masculine in private. Then I got a new girlfriend, and quit saunas entirely.

I did have some unforgettable experiences there though. Sometimes I miss the community. It’s an inimitable environment.”