I actually stumbled upon the profile of the first woman that I was actually “in love” with on Linkedin. I have stupidly sent a “friend request” and I’m curious about where things will lead. A part of me thinks it will be good to have a “blast from the past” but the more cautious part tells me that I must be a masochist.

I met this girl back in my second year of university. We seemed to click. She’s Malaysian and I’m Singaporean and since we were the only people from our part of the world, I guess you could say that this gave us a common bond. We hung out and things seemed to flow so naturally that when she mentioned that she needed a place to stay – I invited her in. I was, as they say, a helpless romantic. But once she moved into the flat, I got “friend-zoned.”

However, I kept telling myself that if I helped her through her troubles, she would see that I was the one for her. I had this vision of living that scene in Pretty Woman when Julia Roberts kisses Richard Gere on the lips after saying that this is one thing she never does with clients.

You could say that I was young and helplessly in love. The time that we had spent had become such an invaluable part of my existence that whenever she left my flat, I felt unbearable loneliness. I was in my early twenties and I had a flat in party central of the most prominent cities on the planet, I dreaded being away from her. We partied regularly and once in a while there were wonderful scenes of domestic bliss. The girl was a magician in the kitchen, especially when it came to French food.

However, she was troubled and while she did honour her two promises to me (This was back in the Asian Financial crisis and I lent her 2,000 GBP for her school fees and got her to promise that she would do well in her career. In fairness, she paid back what she owed and if the profile I saw was really her – she seems to have done well), she had some funny ideas of what friendship meant.

It took me a while to get over her. Friends and family urged me to resist calling her and to make her call me. Had a confrontation with her in her school library and luckily I met a nicer, more mature Malaysian girl when I served an internship at Citibank Singapore (also didn’t work out but at least this girl is a pleasant human being and we still speak over WhatsApp on occasion).