Before Levi I was never capable of having "emotionless, no strings attached, sex." Being somewhat of a hopeless romantic, I couldn't even fathom such a thing. I wanted love, I wanted passion, I wanted romance. Everything else just seemed dull.

After Levi though, I completely understood. I didn't want a relationship. I didn't want to hear about anybody's problems. I didn't want to go out to dinner. But I did, sometimes, want to have sex. So, no strings attached sex became my "thing." Being new to that game I quickly discovered a few things.

1. There is no such thing as "no strings attached sex." Sure everyone talks a good game, men especially. But when you actually start playing you realize that emotions creep up (obviously varying) no matter what the situation. We are human, we have emotions. Damn.

2. These "relationships" are actually harder to manage because in between having sex all you're talking about is how great it is that you're not getting attached, how awesome it is that you're not in a relationship, how not jealous you are, etc. When actually, you are in denial, or at least one of you is.

3. As a result of all of that, these relationships oftentimes have messier break-ups than traditional relationships. Why? Because neither party was being completely honest and that is bound to hurt someone's feelings.

I just found this out again. And this time, it was my feelings that got hurt.

Found myself engaging with a man that I had already known for a bit who is also going through a divorce. We found ourselves talking about the divorce process at a party one night. Shortly thereafter we found ourselves having a "casual fling."

My best girlfriend finally broke it off with the married guy she'd been seeing for the past year. Of course she didn't know he was married when she started seeing him, despite suspicious signs.

That doesn't bode well for any of us.

While warnings seem redundant, and books like Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo's He's Just Not That Into You and Jamie Callan's Hooking Up or Holding Out spell out exactly what not to look for, it bears repeating: If a guy looks sweet, but acts sneaky, you should probably be wary. Has to run to catch a train after work? A tan line on his ring finger? Wants to meet for lunch, and go to hotels? Duh!

Even if it's just that little voice in the back of your head that keeps whispering, "This doesn't feel right," then it's probably not right.

The Internet is a constant source of distraction and deception. I've heard of more guys who either get hooked on cyberspace porn, or start to roam in places they shouldn't be. (Why do you think David Duchovny is being treated for sex addiction?)

It seems there's a web site now for almost everything. One of my "happily married" guy pals just met someone from a site that specializes in married couples seeking discreet affairs. A quick Google search, and philanderers.com is just a mouse click away.

My friend insists he's only looking for fun, not out to destroy his marriage, but I know differently. We FWW women can smell divorce coming a million miles away.

Because, divorce stinks; it smells like sex, lies, and the Internet.

This guy, Mike — you probably haven't met him. But you've heard of him; I've been going on about him for a while now. I'm sorry that there aren't more of him, that there aren't dozens and dozens, so I could dole him out everywhere he might be needed. Because, it turns out, Mike is pretty much perfect for a divorced girl. At least, this one.

He has never tried to move any faster than I am comfortable with.

He has never said anything negative about Jake, no matter what I've told him, no matter how I've felt, no matter how he might feel. He knows how to be supportive and understanding without being derogatory.

I've had hysterical breakdowns, panic attacks, periods of unexplained misery. He's happily (well, maybe not happily, but certainly willingly and patiently) weathered these, as little sense as they made to either of us at the time.

Most notably, most importantly:

He accepts that this marriage was part of my life, that it is now and will always be part of who I am. He never pretends it didn't happen. At the same time, he knows he doesn't have to feel threatened or compared. He doesn't mind that there was someone else important before him.

I don't know if he has any idea how much of a worry it was that, if I ever got into a relationship again, I would somehow have to ignore or negate or erase those years that were with someone else. But with him, if I'm still sad over this marriage sometimes, if I have a story that involves me as I was before — it's a non-issue. He's enough of a friend that all those parts are just a part of me, and I don't have to pretend they're not there.

So, I'm thanking him.

I wish everyone were as lucky as I am.

I forgot to add this wrinkle to my post about my non-anniversary. A few weeks out, I told Rob I had a business trip to Chicago just after our big day, and suggested that since neither of us had ever spent time in the Windy City, maybe he should come along and we could tack on an extra night in the hotel.

We have no love life at home, so you know, I figured it wouldn't hurt to see what playing around in a new city and retiring to a lovely hotel room could do for us.

He said he'd check about getting a day or two off from work to make it happen, and then promptly forgot, day after day, to do so. Sounds like a guy who is not up for a romantic whirlwind trip away to a new city with his much-adored wife, right?

The truth is we both find excuses to avoid romantic situations. And week after week we work with a therapist on improving our communication and figuring out our shared goals, and never speak of the fact that there's nothing intimate about our relationship. We're all about denial.

A friend recently admitted he has to make a conscious effort to have relatively frequent sex with his girlfriend. He says it's too easy to forgo it in the name of exhaustion or lack of amorous mood, and that he find he has to work at it, as you would in creating a new, good habit. He's never disappointed once things get going, and always happy he made the effort.

But it has been so long for me a Rob — a year and a half — that I can't imagine getting over that initial hurtle...or enjoying the experience, much less make a habit of it.

Okay, I'm making a pledge now to bring up sex at couple's therapy soon. If you think you're getting tired of me posting about my lack of a sex life, imagine being in my shoes (or bed). 

Congrats to Alice on her recent anniversary! I just celebrated one as well: my fifth wedding anniversary. But since my friendly and comfortable relationship with Rob sorely lacks romance, the idea of making big deal about our fifth was a bit embarrassing.

Add to that how I gave Rob an honest yet hopeful note card last Valentine's Day and he gave me nothing (I know, it's a ridiculous holiday, but nothing whatsoever?), and you get full-blown AWKWARD!

A few days out, Rob actually checked in to see how we should handle it. Well, we had already justified our recent vacation by calling it an anniversary gift to ourselves. So maybe we were all set. Plus, we had a block party and another friend's house party to attend on the anniversary date. So we'd spend the day being neighborly.

When our actual anniversary arrived, this time I had nothing for Rob and he had a note card for me. It read in part: "I'm glad to be where we are today.... I'm glad we're on this path together and I love the family and home we've made together."

Oof! I felt guilty. I don't disagree with what he wrote, but even in the face of his transformation from drinker and gamer to more thoughtful partner and fellow meditation practitioner, my doubt about us surviving long-term remains strong. Congeniality and shared interests are important, but when there's no sex, it's nearly impossible to pretend everything is good, much less something to be celebrated. 

The other day I was cruising around online for success/failure statistics on re-marrying your ex and the closest thing I could find was an un-sourced article that said there are none. Helpful.

If I'd found the numbers, they wouldn't really apply to me anyway, being as I never technically divorced my ex before the reunification.

And, really, who cares about the numbers anyway?

What I found way more practical than a bunch of numbers that have little to do with my husband, my relationship, and my attempt to raise it up from the ashes was a list of 10 tips for making a second marriage work.

It's the kind of stuff we talk about in therapy every week. Right now the biggie for me is flexibility, figuring out how to integrate all my solo routines back into a partnership lifestyle without feeling like I've forfeited myself.

These first few weeks it's been rough transitioning back to being on as a mom everyday; I've mourned the me time I had half of every week and I realized I'm just as exhausted by the change in routine as I was when I left two years ago.

Aha, there's that aha moment. The change in routine. It's the transition exhausting me, the recalibration itself, more than specifics of how things are changing.

That whole first year of separation was a struggle to figure out how. How to do it all myself. How to get dinner on the table every night and kids to school on time every morning. The second year, I had it down.

Easy isn't the right word, but it stopped feeling impossible.

Flexibility for me right now is all about figuring out how to do it differently, and remembering that's okay. 

Want to hear the definition of uncomfortable? Try going to a movie with your husband that's chock full of sex even though you and your husband's level of intimacy is strained at best.

True story.

Last night my husband and I went to see Choke. If you go to see it then expect to see plenty of sexual situations. It's not like I wasn't expecting it since I read the book beforehand, but it was the first time my husband and I had been to a movie together that featured so much naked fun during a period in our life when our sex life consists of once a week or so me nudging him and saying, "If you want to do it, go ahead before I go to sleep." Ahh, romance. 

It's tough to watch a movie that so blatantly displays one of the very things we have tried to deal with but can't seem to fix.

You've heard about not talking about the elephant in the room? This was like the elephant sat in front of us at the theater and bellowed loudly from its trunk every few minutes.  And wore a big hat. And threw popcorn at us.

Stupid elephant.

My husband is enough of a gentleman to not nudge me and say something vulgar about how he's glad someone is getting some enthusiastic sex once in a while, but I've been with the man long enough to know what goes through his mind. 

Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to turn off emotions and just have a passionate romp in bed with him while our relationship flounders. I wish I could, though, because it would certainly make going to the movies a lot easier. 

Recently a very good friend of mine called me, "rigid." "Rigid!," I exclaimed. "Me!! Rigid?"

"Yeah, you're rigid," she replied. And then added that in her opinion I've always been "kinda uptight" but since my divorce, it's gotten worse.

We joked around about it then, laughing at each other, and soon it was forgotten and we continued our day. But not long forgotten. On the way home, I kept thinking about it. Arguing with myself.

I'm not rigid, I thought; I'm light, easygoing. Hell, the people at Adrian's daycare have dubbed me "the hippie" — another label I'm not too fond of — and anyway, isn't hippie kind of the opposite of rigid?

So, I did what any girl would do. I called one of my other friends to complain. "Can you believe so-and-so called me rigid?" I asked. "Well, uh, Faith, I don't know how to tell you this but you kind of are. You really could stand to lighten up a bit" was the reply that came from the other end of the line.

She went on to explain that sometimes my friends will joke around with one another about all of my "rules," about the orderly way that I do things; or rather, the way that I do things in order.

And then I started to get it.

I do have a lot of "rules," because for one, it makes me feel in control, and the other obvious reason is that I am a human and by nature we are creatures of habit.

Although I don't believe that this "rigidness" of mine has worsened, I do see myself carrying it over into areas of my life that I hadn't before the Levi Fiasco.

Like dating. I have rules about what days I will go on dates. I will not do lunch dates. And when I'm in a relationship, I won't have sex before five — unless it's a weekend or holiday. Why? It's a direct result of the Levi Fiasco.