Romance is like fresh cream…

it has a very short shelf life and goes off once you expose it to the light!

If you ask a long-married couple whether they’re happy or not, they may look at you rather quizzically as if they haven’t quite understood the question. It’s probably not something they care to ponder over, for if they did and the answers came up negative, it would open up enough cans of worms to stock a fishing tackle superstore.

I was married once. Well, twice actually. And both times the morning dawned when I simply couldn’t stand it for One More Day. My first marriage survived four years, my second fourteen. It would have been far safer for me to have stayed put – and I would have hurt a lot less people – but I knew the greatest infidelity of all would have been to myself.

And so I took my children – and my chances – and after a short period of readjustment, I plunged back into the swirling waters of the singles social scene. I had no idea whether I’d be swimming upstream in a muddy maelstrom or floating on my back in the middle of Lake Placid. Twenty-four years on, I’m still bobbing about on the Seven Seas of Love – enjoying the breast stroke though not always the crawl!

I shudder to think what it would have been like had I stayed married; I’d probably look and act my age by now like so many women whose emotional lives contain no rollercoaster rides, no passion, no drama, no excitement, no thrills and therefore no soaring highs and no crashing lows. Just a long arid road planted with the trees of repetitive tedium and conjugal monotony. So would I swap my single status for that of being married? No way!

Males and females do, of course, have very different requirements when it comes to being together. The words ‘successful marriage’ strike me as an oxymoron, rather like ‘considerate builder’ or ‘exciting cricket match’. It’s a wonder we manage to connect at all, except in the obvious ‘key in lock’ kind of way. But when a relationship runs out of steam, it also runs out of imagination, communication, innovation and our old friend… romance.

An ongoing source of sorrow is that no matter how hard we try to preserve it, that delicious stomach-churning exhilaration that accompanies each new encounter seems to last no longer than a butterfly landing on your shoulder.

Take my last relationship … it was all going swimmingly (he treated me like a Princess on Valentine’s Day!) but four dates on, I noticed our conversation had dwindled down to a rather plebeian intercourse about our various children, the weather, work and what he’d had for lunch.

Of course, I was still up for finding out whether he preferred lace top hold-ups to stockings and suspenders, Thai prawn curry to fish and chips, cinema to theatre, blindfolds to handcuffs, but he seemed more interested in talking about the football fixtures.

And so the romance ebbed away like shale upon the shore. I searched for it behind the sofa and under the bed but I couldn’t find it anywhere… and when he had the nerve to accuse me of becoming ‘as comfortable as a pair of slippers’ I had no alternative but to diss him publicly – in my blog.

Result: Instant Dumping! But did I dump him or did he dump me? And how much did it actually matter? We’re still friends but neither of us really needed another friend…

Boys, a lesson to be learned here: if you want to keep a woman on her toes while sweeping her off her feet (thanks Julia!) do try to keep the romance alive. It’s up to you. Older women prefer you to make the running. We’re not as egalitarian as our younger sisters.

Emailing, texting and phoning are wonderful. Little surprises are even better. Being touchy feely – even if it’s not in your nature – goes a long way. Exposing your feminine side and verbalizing your feelings – all huge plus points.

I do believe that dormant romance can be rekindled…all it takes is a little dedication, so I dedicate this to all the great romantics out there. Label it. Live it. Love it.

Poshbird aka Wendy Salisbury is the author of The Toyboy Diaries 1 and 2.