This time last year, Libby was looking back on 2018 with regret. At 37, she was still a virgin.

Libby (not her real name) was one of four thirtysomething virgins to share their stories with the Guardian in June. The piece struck such a chord that there was cause for a follow-up article on the many readers who got in touch to say they started their sexual lives in their 30s – and urged those who were worried about not having lost their virginity not to give up hope.

Libby had vowed that 2019 was going to be different. When she spoke to the Guardian at the beginning of the summer, she had recently changed her medication for anxiety and depression to great effect, had signed up to online dating and was feeling optimistic about the future. What happened next?

Stresses with work and family meant Libby’s dating was put on hold. When September came, she was feeling down about her looming 38th birthday – “not that I’d set that as a deadline, but it felt somewhat significant”.

Late one night, Libby was talking on the phone with a man she had met through online dating. They had quickly established that they were not romantically compatible, but had become close friends, supporting each other as they navigated the dating world.

“He asked me, more bluntly than he ever had before, about how I was feeling about my ‘mission’. And he offered. I was gobsmacked. I don’t think I actually said: ‘Yes, OK’, but it was going to happen.”

To set Libby’s mind at ease, some long conversations followed about expectations, eventualities and practicalities. “That was our rule: we had to be totally honest.” She did not tell anyone beforehand, not even her two closest friends who were, for a long time, the only people who knew she was a virgin. “I just wanted it to be mine.”

On the day, her anxiety was “through the roof”, but it turned out to be fantastic, she says. “It was great celebrating it afterwards – we high-fived. We couldn’t stop smiling.” Telling her friends the morning after was also a delight. And it happened shortly before her birthday.

Her primary feeling was relief, Libby says – “just immensely relieved that I’d never again have to tell anyone I’m a virgin. It was this weight that I was carrying around. I really do feel lighter.”

It has brought her and her friend even closer. “It was a really amazing gift,” she says.

Libby is sceptical of the “just get on with it” attitude many people expressed towards those featured in the original article, particularly for those who struggle, as she did, with their mental health. And she adds, it is probably harder for men: “There’s pressure on guys to know what to do.”

For Libby, losing her virginity really did make a difference. “Someone said to me: ‘It’s a whole lot of hype about nothing.’ But given the mental weight I was carrying around, it’s not nothing.”

Libby says she still has much to learn, “more confidence and experience to gain”, but she feels good about the challenge. “All I can hope is for each year to be better than the last.”