Salerno.

Michael, as it turns out, was actually from Sweden and had been living in Salerno for about 2 years. He moved here because he likes the slower Italian lifestyle. He is dressed quite fine, with tight jeans and a blazer, clearly putting in more effort than I’m used to with American men. He speaks excellent English and Italian in addition to his native language, and for the most part I can understand our conversation in the bustling restaurant while we eat. I find myself very intrigued.

Red wine with seafood, what a faux pas! But I wanted red wine. And sea food.

He tells me about a wine bar down the street, and says he is heading there after dinner (he would later admit he had already been to the wine bar before dinner, but he just wanted an excuse to keep our evening together going). I ask if I can join him, so we finish our dinner and head down the street. Michael seems to know everyone – the waiters at the restaurant, the server at the wine bar, friends in the street. He is amiable and makes me feel genuinely at ease.

He wants to take me on a tour of Salerno, because he knows the best view in the city. My mind wanders back to the recommendations of all my guy friends from back home who made me promise I wouldn’t wander off with random Italian guys… but then I think of all my girlfriends who were more than encouraging of potential Italian escapades and asked that I just to listen to my gut to keep me safe. My gut was telling me this guy was a good one, so I’m going with the liberated feminine inspiration tonight! I am here seeking freedom and self-discovery, after all.

We wander the dark streets of Salerno, and Michael points out landmarks and tells me about the history of Salerno. We wind our way through the narrow streets to make our way to one of the highest points in the city where you can look down over the water. As we walk, I joke with him that I’m breaking my promise to not wander off with strange men, and he laughs and promises he will take care of me.

Nighttime view from the top of Salerno, Italy.

After several sets of stairs, we finally reach the view, and it is absolutely magnificent! My iPhone camera certainly doesn’t do it justice, but it takes my breath away. I’m suddenly very glad I followed my heart on this adventure. Michael looks me in the eye, and I can feel that we both want to kiss, but there is mutual hesitation. I think to myself, yes, he is certainly one of the good ones. And I’m so far removed from dating, I couldn’t trust myself in the moment that the tension was real. He takes my hand instead and says he would like to walk down to the water now, so that we can look up to see the second best view in the city of a castle on top of the mountain. We slowly wind our way back down the streets of Salerno, hand-in-hand, all the way to the water’s edge. He points back up, and I see the gorgeous view of the castle lit up at night.

View of Arechi Castle, Salerno, Italy

In that moment, he turns towards me and leans in for a gentle kiss. The kiss is perfect – sweet, tender, and inviting, and I lean into his body and wrap my arms around him, breathing him in. It feels incredible to submit to my desires. We both want it, and I feel a release of emotions as I kiss him. This is definitely part of the liberation I came here to find. Being in a foreign country where no one knows me and without a reputation to uphold, I feel blissfully free.

For so much of my life, I have struggled with my sensuality. It was a huge sticking point in my marriage, the elephant in the room if you will. According to Andy, we never had enough sex (ah, the age old marital strife). And the pressure to have sex was always present, sometimes spoken and sometimes unspoken (yet so heavy I could barely breathe). I was in a routine of forcing myself to keep it up, just enough to try to keep the tension down. It had been this way for almost a decade (since even before we got married). But like so many women, I had received the messaging that it was my duty to provide in that way. And that the other parts of a relationship are far more important than sex. Andy was safe, secure, and loving, so the fact that I didn’t have sexual desires was totally normal, right? I think I had always used sex as a tool to keep a relationship going. I had never tried to connect to my own desires. I mean sure, I’ve orgasmed plenty, but my orgasms were always for the man I was with, to make sure he knew he did a good job. The orgasms felt great, but they weren’t really for me.

I had become so withdrawn in my marriage because of the constant pressure of sex that I had stopped all intimate contact. It felt as though Andy saw everything as an invitation to push for sex, so I avoided hugs, kisses, even changing clothes in front of him. We had zero intimacy, because I was terrified to do anything that might arouse him or imply that I wanted sex when I didn’t. Andy wanted me to see a doctor, start antidepressants, remove my IUD, anything that might “fix” my lack of desire. He told me once that I must have been born with something disconnected in that way, that some people just have lower libidos. It made me feel broken. I felt as though I needed to fix my ability to be a better mom and I needed to fix my libido.

Finally, about 1.5 years before we separated, I told Andy that I did not want to have sex anymore until I felt the desire to do so. I needed to take that off the table in an effort to release that constant pressure. But I never felt the desire, so we never had sex again… or any other form of intimacy for that matter. I genuinely hoped that if the pressure was removed, I might find my way back to him. But there was so much wrong with our relationship, all entirely unspoken, that the way back felt impossible.

So here I was, in Italy, kissing an unfamiliar man, completely uninhibited and absolutely full of desire. Maybe I wasn’t so broken after all.