We are who we have loved.

How we behave with our current partner has a lot to do with what we learnt from past relationship.

Leodi: if things might turn out differently with the first date gone well, (either you or me) will you be here working with me now Nina?

Perhaps, he was referring to when I’d known  Mich during our students’ days in Sydney and he, with his own  Mary O’Toole during his students days in Ireland …...

As for me some spark flew. We ended up as a couple but it all ended up in tears. It taught me a little more about what love is and more importantly what love is not.

Mich went back to Mal after his final exams  and was married to someone else and so did I in Sydney six months later.

(Mich was married for eight years before his divorce and my own marriage lasted thirteen months…and the experience gave me a better idea of what I must do or must not do- in that quest to find ‘true’ love but by fate our life journey crosses and we are now working in the same surveying team)      

Me: I am glad it didn’t work out, as I would have missed out a wonderful relationship I had with you, before I met 'him'. I define relationship as anything with some kind of emotional connection between the respective man/woman. We are I believe, the sum of relationships past.

What we are now and how we behave with each other is, to an extent, shaped by whom we had shared our life with before. Whom we choose to marry has also to do with the lesson on love from past relationship.

My list:

Ø        Don’t underestimate kindness, gentleness and patience in a man. (he might turn into an angry cobra..)

Ø        If you don’t love the way he looks, the way he sounds and the way he speaks, forget about marriage because       that’s the first and last thing you are going to see and hear every day for the rest of your life.

      (he speaks Javanese…I will definitely twist my tongue to French…)

Ø       If he doesn’t share your sense of humour, you are going to have a frustrating and boring life together.

Ø       If there’s anything about him that you view with disquiet at the start of the relationship- the way he eats (to me it is what he likes to eat), the way his lips twisted when he smiles ( hehehehe…), his gaze (could practice poking those eyes with my index finger )-reconsider because that disquiet might one day turn into disgust.

Ø      Only marry someone you won’t mind sharing your most precious possession with. ( Does that include Billi…)

Ø      If you are not able to sit in a room without a TV, stare into each other’s eyes and talk and talk for hours on end about nothing in particular, it is not a good sign. 

     ( he is a diehard MU fan and my papa, mama and bros are diehard Liverpool fan….will I survive the ordeal?)

Ø       A man who kicks your cat is not the man for you. ( he doesn’t like cats. And I will kick him thousands even if he is merely pushing my cat away)

Ø      Be sensitive.( I will avoid talking about things that might cross the line and hurt him…eg.….F)

Ø      You can’t make someone love you just because you love him.

  Keep an open mind. (you could only afford to love him but not marry him)

Ø     Don’t get overwhelmed by a man’s fancy car, fancy house or fancy clothes. (It is the person inside the car, house and clothes that matters…as i could earn and buy things myself)

Ø     Finally, never borrow your boy friend money. (He doesn’t want it back and it will be a source of friction and you are in his debt.

When I asked him, lessons from past love, it was a much shorter list.

He would marry a woman he fancies, who’s considerate, who gets him, who loves him and whom he has absolutely no doubts about marrying her….

.