I Wish to Love Again

People

Oct 1

I wish to fall in love again!

I was thinking of it while doing my end task at work. I worked in a bank that never sleeps. I usually get up at 4AM and prepare breakfast for my boys and head to my workplace till I clock off at 8PM. I had been a widow for 11 years; my late husband died of lung cancer.

Wouldn’t it be nice and great to have someone to talk to after a long day of hard work? But how – I do not go out partying because I am a homebody woman. I had been a single mom for ages.

One night, I remembered my aunt from my mother’s side of the family. She once asked me to try to go for online dating as it might help me find love eventually. So I started googling dating app.

February 2017

Sam, a British single man found me online, a dating site called FilipinoCupid. Everything happened so fast. He came to the Philippines in March 2017 and we started dating. I was then working in Makati while Sam booked at Red Planet, also in Makati. During those weeks, we meet during my lunch breaks, after office hours and weekends. Sam met my co-workers and my two boys.

Sam went back to the UK and came back May 2017 to the Philippines. He stayed three weeks in Manila then back again to the UK. We continued our long distance relationship. It was so hard to maintain it and we broke up along the way in February 2018. We managed to sort things out and we reconciled in March 2018. We met in November 2018 in Thailand and 2019 in Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines (Baguio and Manila) where Sam personally met my mom and siblings.

Our relationship had gone so deep so we decided to live together by January 2020.

January 2020

I quit my job to be with Sam as we planned to live in the UK for a few months and get married at some point. We are looking into living in Thailand, Australia or the Philippines - the latter being the best one since my boys, 20 and 17 year olds study in Manila.

We looked into Siargao for a few months of stay due to its laid back vibe and we could blend in. Sam is supporting my two boys for now, once back in the Philippines, I can do online teaching and put up a small business (beads shop), a non stressful work that would help him out in our finances.

I also joined the online program in TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority). It is a Philippine government agency offering technical education and skills development. I enrolled in Healthcare last April 2020 online and will continue further studies and assessment proper once I fly back to Manila.

COVID19 is a challenge for us as we need to get married in the UK as deemed proper to go back to the Philippines. He is not allowed to fly to the Philippines as we are not married. They only allow foreigners with Filipino spouses. We also reckoned marrying in Thailand but due to time constraint and Thai rules, stay extensions are not clear and we did not push through with it. We got engaged 28th June 2020.

Sam and I discussed that we can have the civil wedding in the UK, legalized and registered. This is the only option we got. While in Thailand, we applied for UK tourist visa for marriage purpose only. In six months’ time, we need to get married in the UK and then back to the Philippines.

August 2020

God is good! My visa was approved and released just in time. There is no need for visa run or extension in Thailand. There were challenges, too, in getting into flights, due to pandemic. Flights got cancelled but only our flight to Germany as layover to the UK went through. We arrived in the UK on my birthday, 25th August , celebrating with Sam’s family.