Hormones.

They say that a woman's sexual peak is in her mid-thirties. And lord only knows, newly single after a dozen years in a dreary marriage, I was feeling my oats, as the phrase goes. (And a very weird one it is; must be related to sowing the wild ones, but has always conjured up images of greasy men in trench coats for me. However, we're all agreed on a definition, and what I was up to in my early- to mid-thirties involved men of a grease-free variety, and the only trench coat in sight was one -- a London Fog, I think.)

So, I was quite willing to believe that was my sexual peak. And I was standing at the mountain-top, pounding my chest a bit. She smiles in fond remembrance.

After the oats were fondled, there followed a few years of the standard girl-meets-guy, guy-moves-in-with-girl, guy-and-girl settle in to happy domesticity ... well, mostly. It was happy, but there was a respectably non-standard mutually agree-upon foray into non-monogamy in there, too. (Enthusiastically embraced, and, later, contentedly set aside.) All very good for confirming my sexual peaked-ness.

Then the forties began, and the hormones, they seemed to recede a bit. Clearly, I was sliding down off that peak, and though the mental interest in the subject has never waned, the physical was a little sluggish, prompting some degree of internal consternation: I like sex! I've always liked sex! Why don't I hardly want it no more???

I've accepted the effects of aging in lots of ways with barely a murmur. The wrinkles (which, so far, I genuinely like), the shifting body parts, the gray hairs (after one foray into the natural look, tastefully coloured) ... all of these, if not embraced, at least accepted. I yam what I yam.

But this receding of the libido? Much harder to take. This did not fit in with the woman I've always perceived myself to be. I like the energy of eros, I like the sexy me. I like that it's often hidden under an ostensibly demure front; the libido flaring out comes as a doubly-erotic jolt. But now, the demure front was becoming less of a front, and I did not like it. I was not about to go gentle into that drab night.

My worries were needless. The hormones, they've shifted yet again. Realizing that there were less of them overall, they seem to have taken a "united-we-stand" approach. If they can't populate my body in equal measure every day of the month, if they can't maintain their former levels of potency at all times, they'll all band together for maximum impact for the mid-cycle week.

Good lord.

If this is what men experience all the time, the wonder is not that some of them wander, but that any of them manage monogamy at all.

For a week a month, I eat, sleep, breathe sex. I ooze pheromones. I eye men on the street. My mind wanders, my eyes wander. That's all that wanders, mind you. We're monogamous now, Matthew and I, and I am a woman who keeps my word.

It's taken some conscious effort. I don't go out with my male friends, a decent percentage of whom are former lovers, that week. Me, in that state, imbibing alcohol with a man not my husband? That's dancing drunk on a highwire over hungry lions. Can't be done.

Matthew, he's certainly reaping the benefits of the randy week. He has no complaints.

But, my god. If I had this to deal with every day of the month, monogamy would assuredly founder. I am reeling. Reeling even as I enjoy the ride.

Sexual peak in the thirties? Pfft.