If we’re honest, I suspect every woman on the planet loves one thing more than any other. It’s the simple, beautiful fit of spooning with your lover. I may get showered with messages telling me I’m wrong about this but I’d really be surprised. It’s the ultimate intimacy.

Today my photo is designed to show how it all goes wrong and the beautiful fit sometimes develops into a mismatch for no reason other than the two participants are facing the wrong way. The fit no longer works and you end up with an awkward, uncomfortable outcome.

My posting of yesterday invoked a complete flood of responses, both private messages and public ones, from people relating to the plight of my friend. So many people have said to me since that they too know the pain and anguish of the realisation that a relationship that they thought would last for ever suddenly jarring rather than smoothly fitting together. Many, many of the responses came from people who I thought were completely sorted, completely right in their relationships. I was shocked and saddened to find it wasn’t so. There is so much unhappiness out there and for whatever reason my tale seemed to hit a nerve with many readers.

It left me wondering whether or not it was just a simple (she says) matter of working out why the mismatch has occurred and simply shifting round to make the match work again or if the two simply fall apart because the balance goes.

Many of the comments that have come into my box have talked of the hope of doing just that, sliding the spoons back together until their harmony is restored. The analogy is in some senses a rather poor one because clearly there is so much more to a human relationship than to a pair of stainless steel spoons. But I make no apologies for making it anyway because there just seemed to be so many people out there telling me that’s exactly what they are trying to do in their lives.

I’ve spent the day pondering on just how to keep a relationship on track and I’m sure I have no idea why something gels and works. It’s one of David’s most embarrassing memories (he’ll kill me for saying this) to remember the day, early in our relationship, that he told me that I wasn’t really his type! He didn’t mean it in a nasty way, he was responding to something I’d said and was trying to be fair and kind to me and not to lead me on. Our love grew from a tiny spark and eventually a flame happened.

How could either of us have envisaged that a couple of years later we would be living together and so deeply involved?

My friend has been really heartened by your thoughts. He was actually moved to tears by them. Today he tells me that he just wants to fast-forward a few weeks and for the worst of the agony to be over. He wants to move on.

For those of you who tell me your spoons are back to front, try gently moving round to make that fit happen again in whatever way you can. It’s so good when it works.

Oh and by the way - this photo is a 'substitute' for the snow on the sundial this morning - the theme of the text would have been the same, but the analogy would have been no sun to run the clock. I got up early, went into the garden with my camera, took a load of pics then when I got home I realised my card wasn't in it!