English churchman and historian Thomas Fuller once said: “Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it.”
By official estimates, there are close to 200 LDR couples getting married in Dubai every year. This, they said is based on conservative computations granting that at least five of the average 25 couples getting married in group weddings wet through LDR.
Indeed, so apt for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) living in Dubai is Fuller’s remarks because most OFWs in the city are in for the long haul living alone due to the absence of their special someone left behind back home.
Indeed, such is the love story of OFWs in Dubai so much so that one needs only to drop by the Philippine Consulate General on a Thursday afternoon and stand a good chance of seeing couples getting married in a group ceremony officiated by a vice consul.
At least five of these couples, it’d turn out, endured LDR for years, where one got ahead and went to Dubai and later on arranged for the arrival of the habibi via visit visa, who in turn, looked for and got a job. Success!
But since they can’t live together because the law bans it, they go into marriage.
Nonetheless all is well that ends well: the happy ending.
