There was a time when I was truly in love with a woman.
This is a story that cannot be described in a single article, so Icy Love may have more than one sequel. It is you, then, who will connect the dots.

Today is Valentine’s Day, and for many that means having a romantic evening with their partner.
For me, Valentine’s Day is Memorial Day, which is the day my father was born. A father I never knew. 

About ten years ago I met a girl. We worked in the same company. She had just arrived and was at a location very far from mine (in that period at least), I would have to drive five hours to reach her. However, the company organised various events all over Italy, and sometimes I would meet her.
A former model. Almost as tall as me. Clear blue eyes, like the morning sea water in Sicily, which is transparent, a waving mirror. A natural blonde. I adored her slender form, how she walked straight, proud of herself.
She stepped out of a world of illusions, going into one of obligation and hard work.
After little more than a year in the Company, her flowing, slender form had transformed. She had resumed eating more consistently and had gained weight. Even so, she continued to exude a fairy beauty that you could see in her gestures, the way she spoke and sat.
We liked each other. I asked her out. Before long, our dates were piling up and I soon became one of the most envied guys in the Company.

I’ll come to the point.

Things were going very well at first.
An unfortunate series of events has created a sort of distance between us, and what could have been a potential eternal love remained just a miserable idea, a missed chance.

February in Le Marche is not bad. I lived in Fermo, at the top of the mountain, a tourist town, beautiful to visit.
She lived down by the sea, in a place called Porto San Giorgio.
I booked a restaurant for the 14th. And I booked a flat for us to spend the night.
At that point, things had just started to crack between us. We liked being together, we didn’t want to separate. I had every intention of taking us out of situations that stifled our relationship because there were several. One of them was the rigid and often exhausting work environment.
We were both tired of the same things, but we didn’t admit to each other. And not communicating better, at the time, led us to an inexorable downfall.

A piece of advice for couples: communicate better.

Communication is one of the fundamental pillars of a relationship. Sometimes we think that it is only us who suffer from a certain condition, that the partner cannot understand, but we are wrong.
Sometimes I think I could have saved us if only I had been braver and more aware of the things that were destroying us.

Because of the stress I was subjected to, I was working a lot, many responsibilities weighted on my shoulders, and given my role in the company there was a time when sex between us was not working.
I wasn’t working.
I felt powerless.

How?

That Valentine’s Day I will never forget.
I wanted to show her that I wasn’t broken, that I was just like everybody else.
I wanted to show that I did desire her.
Before meeting her to start the evening, I walked a long hour. I took that day off to rest and focus solely on her. Us. In the afternoon, just before picking her up, I strolled through the streets of Fermo, praying, asking God to give me the strength to function and make love with her as in our best moments because lately, my body was not responding as it should.
I came to an arch. Beyond the arch was the horizon and the sea. Above the arch, while still asking God to help me, I saw two birds joining at its centre coming from opposite sides. They were playing with each other like lovers.
It was my sign.
My turmoil had ceased.
I suddenly felt relieved and no longer tired.

After dinner, we went to the flat. A nice little place. We immediately slipped into the room. She was cheerful because we also had a television attached to the wall. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be able to make love well, without any problems.
She, on the other hand, seemed lost in superficial things. She was hasty and very unromantic.
We settled down.
We played. I would chase her into the room and try to catch her.
There was a moment when we embraced in front of a vertical mirror. We looked at each other through that mirror, and we were beautiful. Surprised by such beauty, we both stood for a few seconds contemplating the reflection of us.
Then, we started.

How did it go?

It was great.
Not right away, though.
You don’t know her.

At first, I didn’t notice her general way of living or being.
In the beginning (the first two to three months) she was considerate and very interested in our relationship.
But as far as sex was concerned, we just didn’t meet there.
She was very direct. No foreplay. No kissing too much. No obvious romance. Just a few caresses, small talk and straight to the point.

It took me a while to understand this, to comprehend her world.
So, even that evening of the 14th, I started kissing her chest, her belly, her neck, but she was like a block of ice waiting for the one moment.
The penetration.

I have never met anyone like her. I swear.

We made love at least three times that night. It went well.
The next day, though, even though my prayers had been answered, I felt empty and consumed. Between us, there was a realm in which we struggled to connect. And her icy way of experiencing sex intimidated me.
I am fiery and playful by nature, static and control destabilise me, especially in sex. If I don’t play, if there is no passion, I switch off. It is the same with writing and music, what moves me towards art is fire, passion, potential and play.
There was no play between us.

Despite this distance that widened month by month, pushing us in opposite directions (and many other reasons that caused the distancing), we continued to see each other as a real couple.

I found out much later that she saw our relationship in another way.

One afternoon, we stayed at my place for four hours trying to have sex. My erection was inconsistent. She tried to revive it with her hands, and her mouth, putting herself in every position, but despite every good attempt, I couldn’t get aroused. I ran to the bathroom with an excuse and masturbated in front of the mirror.
It didn’t work.
When I returned to the room, she was irritated because she had seen me.
We tried again, and again, and only after three hours did we manage to have sex. At that point, the situation had reversed: I was enjoying myself, but she was turned off feeling no emotion.
After that, we went out with friends. A dinner. She still stayed by my side, we talked, whispering sinful acts.
In the evening, we tried again and it was better.

Sex with her was erratic. Sometimes it was great, sometimes a complete disaster.
One day, a dear colleague told me that my partner had confided that she had never come. I was shocked because I could vividly remember a few moments when she had had an orgasm. I wasn’t even surprised, the sex between us didn’t work as it should. We didn’t spark. I had already had several relationships before her, I knew very well what it meant to have sparks in bed. And the fact that it wasn’t happening with her was annihilating me inside.
So, I had to make one of the hardest decisions of my life.
I won’t tell you now.
Before the final signature, there is more to convey.
Let me know in the comments or by e-mail if you want to know more about my Icy Love.

If you think that is all, you are wrong. A world of events swamped us, and we did not come out of it well. That world left us with many scars.

You know, I had to keep this sort of despair inside me as it seemed impossible to confess. It didn’t seem true to me that just where I felt most capable and active (sex realm), I was about to fail so miserably. Everyone envied me because I was with a former model. They, however, did not know the pain we were going through.
One day, at work, I was having lunch with my colleagues, and I burst into tears confessing my pain.

“What is wrong with me? Why Am I not working?”

It was humiliating, perhaps the most humiliating moment of my life.

It did not solve the problem, because afterwards, I clothed myself with my ego again pretending that things were going well.
Often the people around us cannot help, and we are forced to find the strength to resurrect from oblivion. This, however, does not mean that there is no one willing to listen to you. I urge each of you not to keep such monsters inside, and to make yourselves heard, use my email to tell me your stories or leave a comment if you feel ready to help others like yourself.