I put my wedding ring back on this week, just to see how it would feel. Sam and I have been apart almost two years, but we never fully split, never filed for divorce, or even for legal separation.

This whole time, I've considered us divorced. I've thought of myself as a single woman and envisioned life on an unknown path.

But Sam never gave up. He begged me to go back into counseling — the same man who once sat in that office, week after week, telling me "he was who he was."

He said, "You met me in line for Grateful Dead tickets. Who did you think you were marrying?"

I thought I was done. Told myself it was just legal fees that kept me from filing. Maybe it was true for a while or maybe it was always an excuse to stay together.

If I've learned anything about myself in the last two years it's this: When I want something, really want it, I make happen.

I never even called a lawyer.

I don't know what kind of category we fit in anymore. The marriage never ended. We still live apart, and the kids split time 50-50 between our houses. I'm still single parenting, but now Sam and I are looking for a place together.

I consider what we're doing a second marriage.

I'm not the same woman who left and I won't tolerate the marriage I had. We've been part way into a relationship and just as far out for almost a year now.

But we have been sleeping together.

The kids have grown re-accustomed to family dinners and camping trips. All along I thought I was waiting for the right time to end it for good. The right time. In the three years I agonized over our relationship before moving out, I learned there really is no good time. There's always a birthday or a holiday or summer plans or some other something to make you think leaving would be easier somewhere down the line.

Never is.

What happens, finally, is one day it doesn't matter anymore about Hanukkah or Thanksgiving or Forth of July. You have to get out and you just go. No consulting the day planner.

Sam asked me to come back a few weeks ago. Gave me this ultimatum — get all the way back in or let's go our separate ways. He said: No more sleepovers.

The yes I gave him was not the same kind of yes I gave 13 years ago in a hot spring in Idaho.

Statistics say this "second" marriage has an even more miserable chance of succeeding than the first try. More than half of second marriages don't survive. Lucky for me I succeed best when odds are the worst.

There's relief in this yes. It feels right, so I'm not second guessing. But the truth is, I'm terrified.