I still remember her that captured my heart, my first love and high school sweetheart.

Happiness was abundant when we shared and planned our lives together. But eventually she left while I served my country in Vietnam.

It was tragedy of the highest order to lose a first love coupled with war, these side by side experiences brought. To remedy my heart and mind, I entered into a loveless marriage that was never harmonious but only for inconvenience, my inconvenience.

It lasted for many years surprisingly but it too fell into the depths of hell. Fate continued to torture me into other dead-end relationships where I was convinced I would never find happiness again until one fateful Sunday morning; in a news paper pen-pal ad, I saw overseas women who wanted to correspond with American men.

What the heck! I said, it can't do any harm to play along with them, so I did. I selected a few, found a writing pad and started writing.

A week later, letters came streaming in and I found only one that caught my taste and her name was Lillian. It started out casually, with the usual introduction about family, past relationships and any experiences up to our meeting.

But for some reason, our pen pal relationship from the start seemed to be closer than usual that we got even closer with each succeeding letter.

In one letter she relates, "I have God in my heart that almost got me in becoming a nun after losing my first love to marriage with someone else!

But I became stronger and instead decided to work abroad to get away from him. We had similar love lost but to my surprise, she handled her heart differently by not entering into any more relationships.

Our letters were a routine duty we did for each other and after many months, we were madly in love. The difference however from previous relationships is that our love affair was of the heart only.

We never met to share intimate moments, or even a kiss. It was strictly a love affair of the heart. After more than two years of a long distant love affair, we finally met, got married and shared our first kiss and first intimate moments together.

And though we were physically strangers, our hearts and minds were already one. It was not our first love but it felt much better. Many cherish the carnal aspect of a relationship but for us we remained faithful and celibate while we remained apart.

It's been twenty two years now and we are still deeply in love and we can vividly remember our long distant but unique love affair made in Heaven!

Ends