I haven’t had sex with my husband for nearly two years…then I lost 4st and started taking testosterone – but we’re still not intimate. This is how I’m managing my revved-up libido

The single dad on the school run looked me up and down and said: ‘Hey you’re looking different… In a good way. Those jeans really suit you.’

It was flirtatious, a little awkward, and not the kind of thing I’m used to. And it was, I believe, because of my new, much slimmer look.

I’m married, so didn’t reciprocate with a similarly flirty reply. Which is a shame, since my husband seems barely to have noticed my undeniably sexier body, and if I’m honest, I’ve found myself craving the attention it now surely warrants.

Craving it and enjoying it. Whether it’s my newfound confidence or the new, slinkier wardrobe I’ve been forced to buy, at the ripe old age of 53, I appear to have become something of man magnet.

I know some people reading this will think I have a big ego. They might read the headline and spit their cornflakes out. Maybe I’m a little deluded.

However, I definitely feel much more attractive than I did a few months ago. An older woman feeling overtly sexy is often frowned upon, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

I started taking Mounjaro in May, prescribed by a private doctor, having been demoralised when I went shopping for a swimming costume and had to buy a size 18, the biggest I’d ever been. To be clear, many women look sexy and gorgeous at that size, but my weight had all accumulated around my waist, which is fairly typical in menopause. Though I’ve been a happy size 16 for most of my life, I was starting to become a stout apple rather than a curvy hourglass, and I hated it.

I grew up being told I had ‘big bones’ – but now in my 50s, I felt out of control. I was exercising four to five times a week, doing weights, running and swimming but nothing was having an impact.

I was still consuming too many calories and was often drawn to crisps and savoury snacks at night.

Confessing a Mounjaro habit still feels like a big deal for me. I’ve previously written articles expressing horror at the ‘shrinking’ women I see around me and promising never to join the club myself.

But I’m sure the reason I gave in will resonate – I didn’t want to be the only one still reaching for the plus sizes.

Now that I’ve lost so much weight, I’m happy to be called a hypocrite. In six months, I’ve gone from a size 16-18 to a slim size 12.

I started on a low dose of 2.5mg, and it proved so effective so quickly (I started losing weight after week two) that I haven’t needed to go up a dose.

Importantly, on the advice of a hormone specialist, I also changed my HRT regimen. Previously, I’d only been taking progesterone but in July I started taking testosterone gel as well in a bid to rev up my libido – just a pea-sized amount rubbed into my skin. Not only had I gained all this menopausal weight, but I also had the sex drive of an elderly sloth – and it was showing in my relationship.

Paul and I have been together for 30 years, and have two daughters, aged 13 and seven. And slowly, like so many, our physical relationship has been consumed by the domestic trivia of everyday family life.

If I’m being honest, we haven’t had sex in nearly two years. Every few months, we talk about having sex, and how we need to do it more often, but neither of us ever does anything about it.

So I thought I would – with a fridge full of weight-loss drugs and a drawer-ful of hormones.

Soon I’d lost a stone on Mounjaro and to date I’ve lost 4st. I’m not implying that the reason I wasn’t having sex was because I was overweight – but the weight loss definitely changed the way I felt about my body.

This is the slimmest I’ve been in 20 years, and at a size 12, I suddenly feel confident about myself in a way I barely recognise.

It’s a mixture of that and the testosterone (the latter kicked in about six weeks after I started taking it) and – whoosh! – suddenly I remembered what feelings of desire could do to a person. After years of flat disinterest in that department, I had the old glint in my eye back. I felt positively radiant.

Is that why men started noticing me? Or is it possible I’m starting to notice them, and that’s why they’re noticing me? As a midlife woman, I was used to being relatively invisible. Men in their 70s would give me a cursory glance but that was it.

And look, I don’t want catcalls – I loathed the old days of running the gauntlet every time you passed a building site – but I don’t mind at all that I’m no longer transparent, the person you look past or through.

Whatever vibes I’m giving off with my newfound body confidence, they are, apparently, deeply attractive.

In the pub with girlfriends the other day, an undeniably nice-looking man – a silver fox but surely only in his 40s – started to chat me up at the bar. On the tube, another guy asked me what book I was reading, and we all know nobody makes small talk on public transport. It was a come-on.

I joke with my (mortified) kids that I’ve got a new lease of life. Mummy’s got her mojo back!

When we went to a restaurant in the summer holidays – without Paul – and a young(ish) waiter started talking to me intently about the solar eclipse, my eldest rolled her eyes and told me I was ‘just imagining’ anything other than professional friendliness.

But he did also touch my hand, clearly deliberately, as he gave me my glass of wine.

On another occasion, I’m sure that the chap in the phone shop spent longer than he had to showing me new mobile models. And, yes, he did lean in rather too closely while we huddled over the phone I chose. Didn’t he?

Or am I seeing the world through a new veil of Mounjaro and testosterone-inspired (over)-excitement?

At first, I confess, it felt as though I was living in an ancient Benny Hill episode. I suspect I was overdosing the testosterone at the start, but the world seemed to explode with, well, possibility. I found myself looking at men in a whole new way.

Tall men, short men, old men, young men, men on escalators locking eyes with me as I passed; men on the tube looking up from their phones for a few seconds at me.

Men messaging me out of the blue on Instagram, where I often share some of my everyday experiences as a midlife female writer. Clearly I’m looking somehow more attractive since men suddenly began popping up to say hello.

They told me that I had good bone structure. That they liked what I was wearing. I have never replied to any of these, of course – but the flattery, the compliments, the new tone, well, that was something of a revelation.

In the local park a dad who I knew vaguely from long-ago nursery days approached me while I was buying a coffee and rather shyly asked if I remembered him and his daughter.

It was a sunny day and we sat on a bench together with our takeaway cups, at first talking about holidays, the heatwaves, the local school.

Then, hand on heart, he suddenly said without pause: ‘I feel like you have this amazing energy. It’s unique. Not like other women. And I love it.’

I looked at him, flattered. Before, I’d have assumed he was joking or even making fun of me. But now? I got it. I do have a different energy and perhaps it is amazing. We smiled at each other and I thanked him, and then we talked about a festival we’d both coincidentally been to, and he said: ‘Well, if you like that kind of music, we should go to some gigs together.’

Now, I don’t think for a minute this was a blatant attempt to get me into bed – but I do believe that had I responded in kind, it could have ended up there.

Later I told Paul and he laughed. ‘Sounds a bit woo-woo, all that stuff about energy. He was just being friendly.’

‘Even the suggestion he take me to a concert?’

‘Are you saying I should be jealous?’ Paul asked. ‘Who is this guy?’

The answer was: not my type. The park bench dad was too young for me and very sporty, dressed that day in Lycra running gear which did nothing for me. He is also married, as far as I knew.

But the fact remained, here was a man showing interest in me as an interesting woman, and possibly as a sexual one too.

That was more than I was getting from Paul, despite his tiny flicker of jealousy.

I wondered if I should also show him the very flirty message request that landed that morning from a complete stranger who, as it turned out, was also rather sporty and (relatively) young (because of course I Googled him). Or the older man who slid into my DMs to tell me I had a ‘lovely figure’.

Had I just joined social media, I might have assumed that all women got sent creepy missives like these from random men; that it was just part of being on a platform that allows direct messaging from strangers, albeit in limited form.

But since I’ve been on these apps for years without getting them – or at least without getting these sorts of messages – I know that’s not true.

The fact is, though I’ve had lots of male friends in the past, until Paul came along, I was rarely treated as a woman with sex appeal. I was always known as the ‘quirky one’ or the ‘fun one’ and never girlfriend material.

I found it challenging to look ‘sexy’ in any way. Yet with my new HRT regime, my Mounjaro weight loss and a bit of exercise thrown in, I realise I’ve changed. I’m no longer slumping forward as I used to, but instead pushing my shoulders back.

I’ve always tried to cover myself up as much as possible, but now I feel like I can stand up straight because I feel good about myself and my body.

I’ve started to feel the kind of confidence that 59-year-old Gillian Anderson – my poster girl for midlife women and the editor of two compilations of women’s sexual fantasies – talks about.

In a recent interview, she said: ‘Sadly, I think many women worry that at a certain age they won’t be desirable any more, or that they won’t feel desire as it will disappear with menopause or post-menopause…’

But: ‘Women are starting to realise that life does not end at 50 or at menopause and that there is a whole new world of pleasure out there that they can embrace and lean into.’

And bravo to that. For I have finally glimpsed that possibility too. It’s about feeling more in my body and enjoying it – the beauty routines, the exercise – as opposed to finding its upkeep a burden and a chore.

I don’t want other men – I want my own partner – but I don’t mind that buzzy feeling that comes with the potential for flirtation.

I have started to wear outfits that don’t blend into the background but whisper – or sometimes even shout – ‘look at me’. A pretty dress in a bold colour; posh knitwear, figure hugging denim. I’m loving fashion again.

At a bar with a friend, a man who – if you squinted in the dark – looked rather like the actor Jacob Elordi, approached me to say how much he liked the dress I was wearing: a black leather skirt, knee boots and a slinky navy V-neck jumper.

The female friend I was with started having kittens. ‘I told you he was looking over,’ she giggled.

‘I definitely see more men eyeing you up when we’re out together now.’

Post-Mounjaro I feel as though I’m in some sort of virtuous circle: slimmer therefore more confident therefore happier therefore more attractive.

I don’t base success in life on how many men fancy me, by the way (if I did then I’d have scored a three out of ten until now).

I began my Mounjaro mission to feel better and to get healthier, largely for my kids. But losing 3st is transformative in lots of ways, and getting more male attention is a side-effect I am happy to live with.

We all want to feel special and as though we’re being noticed, don’t we?

Being brutally honest, every interaction with a man that is not my husband makes me feel relevant and attractive.

It’s validation that, no, I’m no longer a walking, talking human dishcloth soaking up stress and cleaning up my family’s daily mess.

In the back of my mind, I’ve always hoped that Paul would see this and react too. If he knew that random men were interested in me – well, it might relight his fire too.

And maybe it has, just a little. He’s not only noticed what I’m wearing, for example, but said nice things about me.

‘Mum’s looking good these days isn’t she kids?’ is not the greatest compliment I’ve ever been paid, but it was said with an undeniably flirtatious undercurrent that I recognised from our early days as a couple. He’s given me the odd squeeze as he’s walked past in the kitchen and I’ve squeezed him back.

Today, I’ve cut back on the testosterone and now only take it every other day – to be honest, it was revving up my libido too much – and though action in the bedroom has not yet revived to a level we’d both like, I know that my newfound confidence has helped me retake the initiative and I’m still very much hopeful that I’ll see some chandelier-swinging in our future.

My hope now is that we’ll become less bogged down in the day-to-day of busy family life and prioritise one another more.

I told myself I was invisible, that this stage of my life was wrapped up. Now I finally feel like I’m stepping out from behind a curtain and shouting ‘ta da!’.

I can’t wait for my partner to feel my newfound excitement too.