All my friends are suddenly getting divorced. Mid-life wives share taboo sex confessions about why they really leave... including common position that made one hate her husband: JANA HOCKING

I know this won't be popular to say, but I secretly love it when my friends get divorced.

'Welcome back!' I say as I start planning our outings.

I spent my thirties losing friends to weddings, babies, home loans, tight budgets and the daily boring grind that comes with it all. So, when I get the text – which seems to be arriving with alarming regularity these days – from a freshly divorced friend telling me they're free and ready to run amok, I welcome them back with open arms.

One dear friend who knew she was heading for divorce got a head start by lining up a dalliance with a man she'd been flirting with from work, for the night after she told her husband their marriage was over.

She said: 'We'd spent years in this unspoken long foreplay, so when I knew I was going to be a little sad after telling my husband we were done, I thought, "Why not distract myself with an exciting new sex adventure?"'

A male friend admitted the same thing and though he waited until they were separated, he already had his eye on his first conquest. He said: 'The work wife became absolutely fair game. After all the years of built-up flirting, that trigger of separation opened the floodgates for us and hasn't stopped since.'

These are just two of many divorce debauchery stories I've directly witnessed over the last couple of years. In fact, the stories I've heard from divorcees about their wild shenanigans, have led me to conclude that the divorced are having, by far, the best sex.

Turns out the old adage is true: 'The best way to get over somebody old, is to get under somebody new.'

One woman told me that after finally escaping a marriage so sexless she could barely remember what it felt like to be desired, she spent the next few years making up for lost time. Within months, she'd tripled her body count.

She said: 'There was absolutely no grand plan. If I went to a bar, I'd meet someone. If I went to a club, I'd meet someone. At one point, I was pretty sure I could have met someone standing at a pedestrian crossing.'

Newly single and determined to reclaim the years she'd lost after getting married at 23, she embarked on what she describes as an international adventure. A surfer in Bali was merely the beginning. She found herself in sex clubs overseas and briefly experimented with women, which wasn't her thing.

'It became a bit of a global enterprise,' she admitted. 'I was trying to get out of my head and back into my body. When you've spent years feeling unwanted, you start to lose touch with that part of yourself.'

The wonderful thing is that she doesn't regret any of it. She knew she was overcorrecting for years of trying to save a marriage while suppressing her desires along the way.

'I realized I'd got what I needed,' she said. 'I wasn't trying to fill some endless void. I just needed to know I still had my mojo.'

Another woman sent me a confession that she immediately admitted sounded much more alarming once written down.

She said: 'I drank way too much, bumped up the body count, went back to an ex-flame, got my cougar on with a 21-year-old when I was 35 and later slept with a 25-year-old. I also hit on several wildly inappropriate people. Not my finest work when you read it all together.'

I thought it sounded like she was having a marvelous time.

An Instagram follower I have grown fond of told that after years trapped in a sexless marriage with a husband whose idea of adventure never progressed beyond missionary, she reemerged into the dating world with the enthusiasm of someone making up for a very substantial backlog.

What followed was an 18-month Tinder rampage featuring a rotating cast of younger men.

At the height of her post-divorce renaissance, she managed to sleep with three different men in the space of a single weekend – one on Friday night, another on Saturday afternoon and a third by Sunday morning.

These days she's happily settled into a new relationship and has retired the roster, but she remains convinced those wild months served a purpose.

'God, it was fun,' she told me. 'I needed it.'

And after spending years feeling unwanted, who could blame her?

Another divorcee decided her newfound freedom was the perfect opportunity to investigate the fantasies she'd previously been too nervous to explore. Her curiosity led her into the world of kink, parties, threesomes and power dynamics, permitting herself to find out what she actually liked.

One woman just wanted adventure rather than romance.

Fresh out of what she described as a 'sh***y marriage' and celebrating a 'joyous divorce,' she dressed up in a sexy outfit and went day drinking on a random Tuesday. She hadn't much luck but wandered into a bookshop on her way home. There, she met a hot Brazilian bookworm, and the language barrier didn't matter.

She said: 'To be fair, we didn't do much talking.'

The afternoon ended in a bathroom encounter hot enough to remain one of her favorite post-divorce memories, though she never saw him again.

Some stories required very little explanation, like one woman who got it on with her trainer at the gym, or another who had secret flings with two senior, married colleagues at work.

The more stories I collected, the more convinced I became that divorcees are having far more fun than the rest of us. And they are a heck of a lot more experimental. Who could blame them after years of trying to hold marriages together while quietly losing contact with their own wants?

Many go feral once the paperwork is signed because the sex represents their newfound freedom and proof, they were still desirable. Finding they still had a version of themselves that had not been completely swallowed by the marriage can be a delicious discovery.

And sometimes, that journey begins with a surfer in Bali.