THE SEX DIARIES: My libido was at an all-time high and I was keen for relief. Then a friend whispered to me about the new toy women just can’t stop talking about…

After Eliot and I broke up, my heart ached. I wasn’t ready to use the dating apps to meet someone new. In fact, I couldn’t imagine ever sleeping with anyone again.

But my sex drive was at an all-time high, having just left a relationship where I was having the best sex of my life. The answer was that I would have to do some solitude for the time being.

Previously, I was always secretive and a little embarrassed when I masturbated; it was never talked about at my girls’ boarding school.

During my 16 years of marriage, my husband Simon and I also never shared what we would do in the privacy of the bath or shower. After the kids were born, our sex life dwindled and I thought I should save extra orgasms for my time with him.

I felt like pleasuring myself was an admission that I wasn’t hot enough for Simon. In retrospect, this is flawed logic, because everyone has to do that sometimes – and of course more orgasms lead to a greater sex drive.

These days, my sneaky “twiddling my thumb” sessions have been rebranded as “sexual wellness.” I’m happy about this because since I’m already working on yoga, vitamins and plenty of roughage, masturbation is yet another string to add to my bow.

In that spirit, I want to move away from just using my own hand, which is what I’ve done for 95 percent of my life. I already have a small bullet vibrator that could double as a lipstick, but I don’t really get the point: it’s so small and buzzy. I also don’t understand the appeal of the huge rubber penis that my friends and I used to laugh about in sex shops.

A survey of three other college moms confirms that there’s another vibrator flooding our algorithms: the graphically named Clitoral Suction toy. No more trying to get someone to go there, no more giving tricky instructions.

The self-proclaimed ‘British leading sexual wellness brand’, Lovehoney, has many suction toys at all price points. The reviews were somewhat terrifying; some women said they had to change their bed linen late at night, others talked about the high intensity of the sucking. But I was determined to try. At 49, I’m in the late stages of perimenopause and I’m noticing my orgasms are waning in intensity. Surely this would help?

Pushing aside the familiar guilt (should clean the kitchen) and shame (thanks to my mother, for whom sex is a very dirty word) and remembering my wellness mantra, I collapse back into bed in the middle of a school day. , so I was sure I wouldn’t be disturbed.

The vibrator was an egg-shaped rod and at the top there was a white protrusion with a hole in it. The box included a handy little diagram to show me where to place it on myself. I carefully pressed the + sign.

The first touch was quite surprising. I had thought the experience might be somehow similar to oral sex, but the sound and feel actually reminded me of the putter on my dad’s old motorboat – quite a lot of shaking, not so much sucking, somewhat unpleasant was at first.

But after some other twisting and pressing of the + and – signs, the heat began to spread throughout the room, which at first felt more like blood flow than sexy. And when I added some imagination to the mix, I got to work.

Considering what I did, the experience felt quite beneficial. The entire groin area was now flowing with blood – apparently a good thing for menopause. A bit like those belts that gyms used to have for cellulite, only for the front buttocks, not for the back.

After ten minutes of thinking I wasn’t really enjoying myself, suddenly I was having a lot of fun. And very soon after, I had a sudden, extremely intense orgasm, which blossomed and disappeared in the afternoon. It was surprising, but fun. And good to know that I wasn’t completely dependent on 28-year-old Eliot for sex, even though my heart still ached.

When Emi came back from school, I was afraid she would go into my drawers and find my new toy. I think I could still get away with telling her it was an obscure hair styling tool. However, it felt good to have more control over my orgasms. If only I could teach my heart the same lesson.

• Annabel Bond is a pseudonym. All names have been changed