It was an earthquake that brought Jonathan and I together. We were friends who commiserated over the clinging relationships we both were stuck in, but nothing more --- until Jonathan went to California for his annual collaboration with Hewlett-Packard. I had no idea where he was, only that he was in California, and then shortly after he left, the big earthquake struck Los Angeles. Suddenly I realised that I would be very upset if something had happened to him. I rang his best friend, Andrew, to see if Jonathan would have been in danger from the earthquake. Andrew assured me he was far north of LA and perfectly safe --- then he contacted Jonathan and told him he'd just had the oddest phone call, and what was going on? Jonathan began sending me faxes, which grew increasingly romantic as the month progressed, and we agreed to meet for Valentines Day, the day he arrived back in Sydney. The rest, as they say, is history.

Fast forward 22 years. We've been married for 20, have 2 nearly adult children, and have lived together in Sydney, California and New Zealand. In the last few years I've become increasingly unhappy in our relationship. Jonathan has always been very good about telling me he loves me and finds me attractive. I've never had any reason to doubt his fidelity, and I've never been unfaithful either, but I've been lacking libido for some years. Sex had become a chore for me and although until 2017 we managed it more often than many couples who've been married as long as we have, it wasn't often enough for Jonathan and it was too often for me. Lack of sex in a marriage leads to lack of physical affection which in turn contributes to a lack of loving feelings, at least for me. For the last few years I haven't really felt I loved my husband anymore. I dreamed of escaping to a little place of my own. When he hurt my feelings with a thoughtless remark, it no longer made me cry --- a sure sign, I felt, of lack of love. It's only when you love someone that they have the power to hurt you. Instead I was angry at him at him a lot of the time.

I have tried to be honest with Jonathan about my ambivalence. I told him I wasn't sure if I loved him anymore, and that I felt more confident when I was on my own, and happier too. I'd had ample opportunity to experience those feelings when we were separated for months at a time, when he was away on study leave or at conferences or I was helping my sister through cancer treatment. I'd also found I slept much better in my own bed so we'd been sleeping in separate rooms since early 2016.

2017 was a tough year for maintaining a rocky relationship. We spent the first couple of months getting our old house ready for sale, and then moved into the new place at the beginning of March. Almost immediately, Jonathan went overseas on study leave for 3 months. We were both unhappy in our full-time jobs, and our old house hadn't sold. In June I visited Australia for a week and came back with the flu. I had just recovered from that when I heard that Dad was in hospital after a fall, so I went back to Sydney in early August and ended up staying 3 months until Dad's funeral, and then came home with the flu again which incapacitated me for another month. In my absence, work worries, still-unsold house, single parenthood and lack of a loving relationship all conspired to stress Jonathan to the point where he lost his appetite and effectively began starving himself without realising. He was exhausted, unhappy and had lost his libido, so even when we shared a bed when I got back, it was purely non-sexual. I was sick, and terribly sad about my Dad, which Jonathan hardly seemed to notice. In December he went away for 2 weeks attending conferences in Christchurch and Sydney.

When Jonathan came back just before Christmas, it was obvious to me that something fundamental had changed. It felt like he had decided to let go of our relationship and move on with his life. He wasn't sad any more, but energised. The vibe I got was friend or flatmate, not husband. He asked me what the good dating sites were in NZ. I said I had no idea, but there was always Tinder but that was more for hookups, not relationships. That's perfect, he said, that's just what I want. Sex with no strings attached. I was rather taken aback. The next day he had a Tinder profile all set up and was browsing prospective hookups in front of me. The more I thought about it, the more sad it made me that he'd decided to move on without asking me if I was okay with that, and I told him so. We hugged. If you want to have sex with someone, I said, don't I get first dibs, at least right of first refusal? Of course you do, he said, I thought you weren't interested though.

The next day I needed to talk to someone about what was happening and how weird it felt. After hearing the story, my girlfriend said that conferences were the most likely place for people to cheat on their partners and perhaps Jonathan had met someone while he was in Sydney. That thought had honestly not occurred to me, although in the past I had even said to him, if you meet someone you fancy at a conference, go for it - just be discreet. That was a measure of how much I thought I didn't care. I've considered how great it would be if he met someone else, that would make our eventual separation all the easier. What a careless wife I've been.

Jonathan had mentioned talking to a woman at the conference and telling her about how he was `separated in place'. That night, he took a Skype call and it was clearly her on the other end. They talked for about half an hour and I hadn't heard him sound so relaxed or laugh so much for ages. My physical reaction astounded me. My heart raced and I felt like I was going to vomit. Like that first earthquake epiphany, I suddenly realised I would be very upset if I lost Jonathan, only this time to another woman. He's still my husband --- you can't have him yet!

If it had just been a case of `I don't want you, but I don't want anyone else to have you either', that would have been untenable. But the insecurity ignited my libido. I needed to jump his bones, I wanted to crawl inside his skin. I even asked him if it had all been an elaborate strategy to make me jealous, in which case I felt manipulated but hey, well played, it totally worked. He said it wasn't, he'd just finally accepted that we were separated. Since then, the sex has been incredible, and frequent - as Jonathan said, we haven't had this much sex since our honeymoon!

A few days later, I asked him what he thought had set off his decision to move on from our marriage while he was in Australia. He told me that he had just decided that enough was enough; I clearly didn't love him and we were essentially separated in all but name, so he decided to do something about it. He signed up for Tinder while he was over there; he also discussed his situation with some friends and people at the conference, including the woman mentioned earlier. She was encouraging him to apply for a job at the Uni in WA where she works. He told me that it occurred to him that once he'd changed jobs and she'd sorted out some issues she was having with her ex-husband, he might ask her whether she'd be interested in having sex but, he added, as it turned out I didn't have to ask. My adrenaline went into overdrive again. "You mean, she asked you?" I said, but then immediately added "No, it's none of my business" at the same time as he said (kindly and not defensively) "I don't think that's any of your business. At that stage I thought I was a free agent." And he's right. I also thought he was a free agent, I was convinced I didn't love him, and I was thinking how best to leave him. So I can't really complain that he finally moved on and slept with someone else. I don't like it, of course, and I obsess over it a lot in private, but I have to admit it saved our marriage.

I know it wasn't serious for either of them (thank God), because after he got back she tried to set him up with a colleague who was coming over to Waikato in January, and he told me he would have to explain to her that `the situation had changed'. I've Googled her, of course; she looks like a nice person with a lovely smile. I torment myself thinking of them laughing together, but it keeps my libido on high alert. Physically she reminds me of myself.

I think it will take Jonathan some time to trust that my feelings have really changed, and that's ok. I've noticed he's not saying I love you anymore. I deserve that. I've put him through the mill the last couple of years and he'd really let go of our marriage in his head. We both had. My sudden about-face must be hard to understand. Hell, I don't understand it. Some switch clicked over in my brain and I realised I had made a colossal mistake. I just hope that we keep talking, we keep making love, and keep our marriage together for another 20 years.

Footnote 1 Feb 2018: He now says I love you a lot, and so do I. We've agreed that we're exclusive again. And we talk, cuddle and gaze into each other's eyes as we haven't for years. It's lovely.