I am lying on the floor of my study, giggling like a teenager. My top half is fully clothed, my jeans and underwear are slung somewhere on the other side of the room. Yep, I really do feel like a teenager again. I’m 50-years-old, and I have ‘lost my virginity’ once more, after years of celibacy. Earlier this week, Ulrika Jonsson was in the news for having sex for the first time in half a decade. “Yes, folks,” she wrote in a newspaper column. “At the age of 52, after a marriage set against a barren sexual landscape and five-year hiatus – I have had sex again.” She went on to talk about how she’d met a man on a dating app, that the experience was a “revelation”, and that she wanted to help other people by talking about it. Five years for Ulrika, but for me, it was almost nine. My husband and I married at 30, and I almost immediately got pregnant with our son. The next few years were a chaotic time where we were both forging ahead in our careers. What followed was that age-old new parent curse of ‘competitive tiredness’, where sex went on the back-burner, and bed was for sleeping. Ulrika wrote that her husband Brian Monet left her feeling “repulsive and rejected.” She went on: “It is little wonder that sex in long-term relationships can wane, peter out, or die a slow, lingering death.” For me, it was slightly different: I wasn’t actively turned down, the problem was (both of our) lack of desire. And yet, I felt that we “had” to keep doing it. I set myself a begrudging goal of once a month, to be “normal”. Of course, that wasn’t “normal” compared with the oft quoted “twice a week” “normal” of women’s magazines, a statistic that nagged at me like a gnat. This Sunday night monthly ritual happened joylessly, month after month. It was almost always me who made the first move, but in my head I’d be planning my outfit for the next day. In the end, the reason for his lack of desire became clear. After 11 years of marriage, when I was 41, my husband finally admitted he’d been having an affair for the past two years, and that he wanted to leave me for his new girlfriend. If I’m being totally honest, I was more upset about the upheaval of my family unit and our son’s wellbeing, than actual heartbreak over the loss of my husband. Like Ulrika Johnsson, my loss of interest in sex continued after we split. “I was not even sure I was capable of being attracted to someone else,” she wrote. I felt the same, but the worrying thing was that I wasn’t even worried about it. I had been quite a ‘sexy’ person in 20s before I met my ex. Having lost my virginity at the relatively late age of 19, I then enjoyed several relationships ranging from three months to four years, with the odd couple-of-night-stands, here or there. I think the longest I went without sex was about five months. But here, at the age of 41 (hardly ancient) I had totally lost interest. If I was ever lonely, it was for someone to go out for dinner with, or simply as a TV companion – those desolate Saturday nights! – but I didn’t miss the physical side of things at all. In fact, at one point I thought wasn’t ever going to have sex again, and I honestly didn’t mind. A friend of mine broke up from a six-year relationship at the same time as me. She went on a ‘divorce diet’ – running 10k races and dating a stream of younger men she met on Tinder. I went on my own version of the ‘divorce diet’ – of good Rioja, Mr Kipling’s apple pies and box sets. Then, last autumn, my son went to university. It didn’t happen overnight, but at some point, my malaise started to lift. Some months ago, I caught sight of my reflection in a shop window, and didn’t recognise myself. Slightly horrified at the extra weight that I seemed to have accumulated, I started to eat more heathily and walk to places where before I would have driven. My sex-drive didn’t reignite as such, but I guess my self-respect was coming back, which was a start. I could sort of imagine myself with a man again. I “met” Chris almost straight away (yes, I know I’m lucky). And I say “met” because we already knew each other a bit. An old uni friend of my brother’s, he had always been around on the periphery. But in November we were seated next to one another at a dinner, and found we had many things in common, including the same football team, and daft comedy. Chris postponed our first date a few times, because he was travelling for work. In some ways I was relieved because I was terribly worried about my body. I was still out of shape – in fact, I was worried about my pot-belly. I also wasn’t sure if my pelvic floor was entirely workable. The only good side effect of my weight-gain was my new boobs, which looked pretty impressive in a properly-fitted underwired bra. A dinner date was finally set. As a responsible adult, I promised myself I would wait at least three dates to get intimate (another mythical “rule” I had picked up from somewhere.) But just in case, I got waxed, tanned, and spent a week’s money on a hair cut ’n’ colour, and some new underwear. To be frank, I don’t remember much about our meal. We got royally drunk. But we did have lots in common – our divorces, our similar-aged kids, and our refusal to take ourselves too seriously. We briefly discussed contraception. He’d had a vasectomy and had only had two lovers in 25 years: I’d been with no-one since my husband. We decided to go without. And so we ended up having sex on the floor of my place, with very little foreplay. It was fast, furious and not particularly Hollywood. “Is it OK?” I asked him. “Oh yeah,’ he replied. Orgasms were not had on my side. But, honestly, I didn’t care. Afterwards, he told me he loved my body, that I had skin of a 35-year-old. He kissed my c-section scar. We both admired my new boobs. And you know what? His body wasn’t so clever either. He was reasonably fit through weekly swimming, but was, at a guess, a stone or two overweight, with hair in places where millennials tend to shave it all off. He confided that he’d had grooming to take the hair out of his ears; I told him I’d had my big toes waxed. I thought it would be weird getting used to another man’s body – but it wasn’t. It felt entirely natural. We met two days later, and spent the following weekend together. Three months on, I am tentatively calling him “my boyfriend”. “Like some penny dropping, like being a good shake, like coming round from a long anaesthetic and being given a shot of caffeine, I physically and emotionally woke up,” says Ulrika. I agree. Since I started sleeping with Chris, colours seem brighter, music is more emotional, wine tastes better. I walk tall and feel physically attractive – even when the mirror doesn’t always match up to my perception. Re-booting dormant desire in midlife brings honesty, respect, and the joy that can only come after years of misery and pain. “Now that I have been rejuvenated and reminded about the importance of intimacy, I never want to let it go again,” says Ulrika. Ms Jonsson, I feel you.