I was powerless to an embarrassing type of sex addiction most women haven’t even heard of – and many husbands don’t consider cheating at all…

It always started the same way.

Roland Cochrun would be walking down the street and see that familiar rectangular sign hanging over a door, then a narrow staircase leading upstairs.

‘Massage’ in red and blue LED lights. It would always catch his eye, whether it cut through the darkness of an evening or simply hummed in the daylight.

He would see it then continue walking, his head down, fighting the urge to stop.

Sometimes he would succeed for a brief moment only to U-turn, dart back into the doorway with his head down and race up two stairs at a time.

It was the same story every time. Roland, successful and in a committed relationship, was hooked on the dopamine rush of visiting these seedy massage parlours.

The women who would give him ‘happy endings’ weren’t particularly attractive, yet he had become addicted to going to these venues which can be found in almost every major city and suburb. You can sometimes find several on the same street.

He would walk in, feeling the dopamine rush through his body, and ask for a massage – always maintaining the pretense at first that that was all he was after.

Then he would get in the small, dimly lit room, and hear those words that always confirmed he’d picked the right place. Have you been here before?

He’d pay the tip – usually $80 – lay face down on the massage table and think to myself: For God’s sake, I’ve done it again. What is wrong with me?

Between 2012 and 2022 Roland, now 36, visited 19 massage parlours, had two one-night stands and engaged in sexual chat with strangers online – as a married man.

He has variously been described as a ‘cheater’ and a ‘sex addict’. But for Roland, it wasn’t about sex. In fact, by his own admission, he has low libido. 

Instead he craved that feeling of being ‘seen’, of combining sex with an element of surprise and uncertainty, and the desire to put himself in situations with the potential for sexual tension.

That’s why massage parlours excited him. He could just get a massage, sure, but if something else were on the table, who knows what could happen? For the same reasons, he never visited an actual brothel because he ‘knew what would happen there’ which was ‘boring’ to him.

Roland’s obsession with these venues – sometimes crudely known as ‘rub-and-tug joints’ – may come as a surprise to those unfamiliar with what really goes behind closed doors at some Asian massage centres.

But he’s far from the only married man ducking into these parlours on the sly, using the excuse it’s ‘just a massage’ or ‘it’s never full sex’ to justify his infidelity…

A STRICT UPBRINGING 

Roland’s story traces back to his childhood when he was always under pressure to be ‘perfect’ and felt ‘controlled’ in every aspect of his life.

From the age of 10 he had a distorted view on relationships and intimacy, claiming he was a ‘full-blown sex addict’ even when he was still a virgin.

He grew up in a Mormon household in Portland, Oregon, went to church every Sunday and was constantly compared to other kids. His family was determined to have a say in every aspect of his life, from whom he would marry to where he would go to university.

‘And I didn’t want that life,’ he says.

Roland started to rebel. It began with wearing baggy clothes, dyeing his hair blonde and getting his ear pierced. But his behaviour escalated and a terrible error of judgement at the age of 14 saw him arrested for indecent exposure in public.

He describes it as the ‘most traumatic experience’ of his childhood. To this day he has ‘no idea’ who saw or reported him and cannot recall the exact details.

All he remembers is being in the car with his father as they returned home from a shopping trip. His dad received a call from his mother explaining the police were coming to arrest Roland at 8pm.

The handcuffs felt cold on his warm wrists and he was taken to the police station where they took his fingerprints, photos and treated him like criminal.

Roland waited alone in a holding cell for two hours and by midnight he was released. The silence on the ride home with his parents was intense yet he went to school the next day as if nothing happened.

He returned for a polygraph test and was asked specific questions to determine if he had known what he was doing. That test was so traumatic he suppressed memories of it for years. 

He never spoke about it with anyone and his family pretended like it didn’t happen. Eventually the legal matter was resolved without derailing Roland’s future.

At 18, he moved out and went to college, but his struggles went with him.

Still haunted by his youthful indiscretion and the profound shame that came with being caught, he became determined to make something of his life. Not just to become rich, but to prove he was worth something.

But as he went from a boy to a man, he began to develop an usual kind of sexual addiction whereby he became hooked on the process, or ritual, surrounding the act, rather than the act itself. 

Much later in life he would discover he had a family history of this problem. His own father, who has since died, would attend Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings every Thursday night throughout his childhood.

At the time, Roland had no idea where he was those evenings.

What he calls his ‘process addiction’ escalated in two stages: In 2012, he discovered online sex chatrooms. Then, four years later, in 2016, he visited a massage parlour for the first time.

The first time he set foot in a massage parlour was an accident. 

Fighting jet lag after a long flight, he couldn’t sleep so decided to get a massage near his hotel. He maintains he was completely oblivious to the ‘other’ services offered.  

The massage was nondescript. Then he turned over and stared at the ceiling expecting a head massage, only to find the masseuse’s hands lingering downwards. 

‘I didn’t ask for anything [sexual], she just did it and I was just like “holy shit”,’ he said. 

He thought about the ‘captivating’ experience for hours that night and wanted to go back for round two. He didn’t know it yet, but he was already hooked.

‘I wanted to go to a place where I don’t know if it’s going to happen and I would never ask. I wanted an element of surprise,’ he said. 

He visited massage parlours another four times before meeting his now-wife. He also found chat websites where men shared their experience at massage parlours and these discussions became another kind of high.

MEETING THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE

One morning in 2017, Roland woke up to a match on a dating app – a young gorgeous blonde. 

He noticed she swiped right on him at 5am, which could mean one of two things.  

‘I thought she was either still drunk from last night or she’s early riser like me. When I matched back with her said she was at the gym,’ he says.

They instantly hit it off, their chemistry was electric and they shared common passions, such as hiking.

Roland decided to quit going to massage parlours and stopped visiting the chatrooms. But six months into their relationship he gave into his desires.

To Roland, his behaviour ‘wasn’t that bad’ because, in his mind, he ‘wasn’t cheating’ since he never had full sex with the massage workers.

His addiction to chat websites, meanwhile, became so serious that he contacted the admins to block his IP. At one point, he even smashed his webcam with a hammer.

After a period of abstinence from them, the pandemic hit in 2020 and he gave into temptation and ordered a new webcam off Amazon.

Meanwhile, he became engaged and, in July 2021, eloped with his wife in Santorini, Greece. She had no idea Roland was secretly breaking every single one of his vows.

Three months into their marriage, he went to a massage parlour.

‘I didn’t even feel like a cheater. I was under the impression that this was just the way it was for someone like me,’ he admits. 

Throughout the entire period he covertly visited massage parlours, he never had full sex with any of the women he paid.

It is not uncommon for married men who get these kinds of massages to excuse their behaviour because it’s ‘only’ hand relief and not ‘proper’ cheating.

‘I never exchanged numbers with any of them, I don’t remember their names, frankly I don’t really remember what they look like,’ he adds.

‘You think I want [to be touched] by an overweight middle-aged woman? No, it’s embarrassing. It’s humiliating but that just shows I didn’t really want to cheat. It wasn’t about sex. That’s not what I wanted. 

‘But I was craving attention and interactions that could – and nearly did – destroy my marriage.

‘I wanted women to want me and married women to wish they could be with me instead of their husbands.’

In addition to the massages, there were two occasions when Roland had one-night stands after meeting women on work trips.

It was calculated: he went out in a nice shirt, pants, dress shoes and a $147,000 watch before spritzing himself with cologne. He knew he looked the part. 

He never hit on women; he ensured he was the one being chased.

Both encounters didn’t involve full sex – that was a boundary he wouldn’t cross, and he made sure to stick to it by heading out without protection. 

GETTING CAUGHT IN 2022

At the height of his addiction, he would use chat sites once a week, often for three hours at a time. His massage parlour visits totalled 19, plus the two women he hooked up with. 

Despite being in a loving relationship, Roland continued until he was caught. 

Late one evening, he was in the living room talking to other people in a chat room while his wife was home. He thought she had gone to bed.

When she walked in, he jolted up, quickly closed everything down on the computer and tried to pretend he was doing something else. 

She didn’t say anything but in that moment Roland knew he had been caught.  

He followed her into the kitchen told her to sit down. 

The first thing that came out of her mouth was: ‘Oh my god, you cheated.’ 

Roland answered: ‘It’s only online stuff, it’s not cheating.’ 

She wasn’t buying it. His wife considered ‘online stuff’ to be cheating. He didn’t tell her about the massage parlours and one-night stands.

In an instant, their marriage was broken. Roland feared his wife would never love him the same way again. 

The pair spent two weeks considering a separation, but eventually decided they would work through their issues without resorting to divorce. 

‘I was terrified of losing her. She’s the only person I’ve ever loved and only person I’ve ever allowed to love me. I was freaking out; she was in shock,’ Roland says. 

‘I kept telling her how I wasn’t unsatisfied sexually and how it wasn’t about that.’

THE ROAD TO RECOVERY 

The couple saw a counsellor separately, then together, as they tried to work their way through Roland’s betrayal. They learned about the different kinds of sexual addiction and how it wasn’t just about having full sex with lots of people. Roland’s wife came to understand the nature of his ‘process addiction’.

Then one day his wife asked him: ‘Have you heard of this thing called a full therapeutic disclosure?’ 

‘No, what’s that?’ Roland responded.

She explained it was a document outlining everything he’s ever done sexually, as well as a full history of his trauma, including the incident from when he was a teenager. 

For three weeks, he put together an 12-page document explaining how his view of sex was warped from the age of 10, his arrest, the massage parlours, the chat rooms. 

Navigating where to go from there was overwhelming for both of them; Roland started a 12-step program which didn’t help.

Walking into his first Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting was a new low for Roland. The room smelt of cigarettes and there was a table in the corner with water, tea and bad coffee. 

There was a felon, an office worker about to get fired for watching porn, and another man who couldn’t maintain a job because of his habit. 

‘It was the saddest room I’ve ever been in,’ says Roland.

While he may have had some things in common with these men, he couldn’t relate to their stories. 

So he took a proactive approach. He saw six different therapists, read books and to date has spent more than a $150,000 on ‘every type of remedy’ available.

Meanwhile, he and his wife essentially had to start their relationship from scratch. 

‘We’ve had to start anew. There’s no coming back from this. It’s a new relationship. She’s with somebody who has the has the capability of cheating on her and I have to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t trust me,’ he says.

Roland hasn’t visited a massage parlour or used a chatroom since, but his underlying needs haven’t changed.

‘In a lot of ways, I still crave the same things. I’ve just built a life and a safety net so that I can’t do that anymore,’ he adds. 

Ultimately, the love for his wife is stronger than his addictions and that’s what keeps him on the right path.

After sharing his journey, Roland wrote the book The High Achiever’s Guide to Sex Addiction Recovery. He’s also launched The Successful Addict program, a recovery group for high-achievers with sex and porn addiction. 

In addition to this he has appeared on various podcasts, including Cheating: When Love Lies, hosted by Jillian Hamilton.