A Love story across borders

Bill had been married to his Swedish wife for 15 years when he came to South East Asia for the first time in his life. They had 2 children a boy 6 and girl 8 years old.
Bill travelled in business for a Swedish company. Soon Bill got impressed by the hospitality and flattered by the kindness he met from the Asian people and the Asian woman in particular. He was not attracted by the prostitutes he met in hotels and night clubs, since he couldn’t understand the thrill of having sex with a total stranger.
But he was really amazed by the way women treated him as a guest at the suppliers he visited.
Bill started to compare with what he was used to from Sweden. Women in Asia were really different, there was no competition with the men; there was no fight for equality. Women seemed to enjoy if they could make him comfortable and if they could please him. What they wanted back was appreciation and respect.
Bill did appreciate and respect these women and he demonstrated this to them.

Bill's marriage was not happy. He and his wife didn’t share the same ideas about how to raise children and build a family. This subject was fuelling their continuous fighting. Bill was a family man and had been determined to overcome the differences but it always ended with him compromising and his wife did not.
Their marriage had come into a situation where Bill slowly realised that he might have started a family with the wrong woman. They were too different and his wife totally lacked competence in compromising at all.
They were never talking nicely to each other, always reminding each other what they disliked with one another. Since the children were born sex was more or less dead. The few attempts, when the need was too strong to ignore, always ended with disappointment for both parties.

After Bill had been travelling in Asia for a couple of years Bill's wife was fed up and wanted to get a divorce. Bill agreed and they started to plan the separation. They told the children about the divorce and of course they were devastated.
After 15 years with the wrong choice of woman Bill felt relieved and at the same time he felt like a big failure. When his own parents divorced, he had promised himself to not get there himself but now he had; freedom and failure in a mess.

During a casual dinner Bill told a female business associate about his divorce. She told him about her recent separation from the man she had been engaged with for some years. She had met the man after an auntie’s intense match making. This woman was of Chinese origin and a third generation immigrant in South East Asia. Bill and the woman, whose name was Ling, had been working together for two years and they knew each other pretty well as colleagues. Now they started to know each other as friends.

Bill liked this woman and the more they got to know each other the more he liked her. It was pretty obvious that she liked him too. Ling made him feel comfortable, relaxed and appreciated. He realized that she was not putting up an act. She was genuine, natural, caring, warm, understanding, funny, intelligent and beautiful.
Finally they ended up in bed. Bill realized that after the years with his wife he was totally confused and had no self esteem left in the bed room. What could he say? How could he explain? They talked about it without making a big thing out of it and let it rest.

Bill and Ling got along very well. They found out that they really were soul mates. Despite the difference in how they grew up, culture, religion, upbringing, education system etc. they realized they shared a lot of values. They shared the same ideas about how to raise children. And they shared the same God.

Bill fell in Love. He fell so hard, but he didn’t mind because he knew this was the right thing. He could feel it so strongly in his heart.
After having spent 15 years with a woman that he thought he loved but soon the love had been replaced with reasoning and common sense, he had learned to listen to his heart and trust it. The lesson had been too expensive but here was the reward.

And the best of it all Ling was in Love too and she fell for him.
And they are still falling.

(So, what about the sex?
Now they have six children, do I have to say more?)