When I told my old boss I was getting divorced, she said: “Well, you did get married in a very desultory way.” I puzzled over the comment for a long time, but she had hit on something. I was missing joy, excitement, fun. It’s good to be sensible when you are investing your pension, but if desultory becomes your permanent mood? It seems obvious now, and I don’t blame my husband for it. In the years since my divorce, I have lighted on that blossomy, foamy feeling more often. I have found it more easily outside the sort of relationship where you share a bank account, thrash out Christmas plans, and discuss what’s for dinner. (That daily discussion about dinner was one of the things I hated most about being married, as I hadn’t yet found my own way of enjoying cooking and planning meals, let alone doing it jointly. It had been a question my mother asked me, and I was often stumped for an answer as a child: I knew we couldn’t have pizza every night.) With men who aren’t my husband, or who don’t want to be, I can stay up all night talking and drinking and listening to music and having sex. I can kiss on manicured lawns, drink prosecco in bed, read poetry at dawn, dance naked in heels, paint my lips red. And the question soon comes: can you make a life from this? Early intoxicating love is one thing, but what about dinner on a Tuesday in March? I was worried about replicating the things I found confining about being married. I had a beautiful home now, but did I know how to live in it with someone else? I was scared of getting trapped again, and I couldn’t see what possibilities there might be in a joint life.