A Good Man

They say a good man is hard to find. Not if you’re online, says Lina, who fell in love and had a baby with a man whose surname means “good”.
Approaching her 30s, with a relationship disintegrating around her, Ukrainian-born Lina decided to plunge into RSVP’s dating pool. As a quiet person, who wasn’t comfortable in pubs and clubs, she felt the web might be a good place to meet her prince.

“Going online to meet someone was always in the back of my mind. And at 29 I really wanted to settle down. I’m a bit more conservative and geeky, so I wasn’t one of those girls who could pop boyfriend after boyfriend,” she said.

Lina’s headline was “looking for a shy, intelligent person” and she found him in Anglo-Indian Alain. As immigrants to Australia, Lina and Alain shared a common bond through their immigration experience, and strong family values.
Lina described her first date with Alain as a truly heart-warming introduction.

“It was over a cup of coffee. Oh, it felt so easy – being with him, talking, and drinking that coffee. Going home I noticed how light I felt inside, only because I saw him. Dating Alain was like coming to a warm house after a long wandering in a cold.”
It’s a poetic description of a blossoming love that the bride went on to capture in her wedding speech.

“Alain has something very special inside him. He is not just good. He is intelligent. He is real. He has a patience and compassion for people, which is rare to come by. All these qualities really touch me. I also think Alain has a lot of light inside him. That light shines through. That light makes me shine. With Alain I can be the best version of myself,” Lina declared to their guests at their Olinda wedding in 2004.

After meeting in their first month online, a year and a half they were engaged, married and now have a 15-month-old daughter Amelie, inspired by the French movie they saw on one of their first dates.

“We both loved that movie so much and when we walked out of the cinema Alain took my hand. Our daughter Amelie was born nine months after our honeymoon.”

Lina says several years ago people were more shocked to hear that she met her husband on the internet, but now she knows several couples who have hooked up online.

“When I was 20 I thought it was embarrassing. But now I think it’s such as great way to meet people, because there’s only a handful of people at work that might be suitable, and if you don’t go to bars, there’s limited opportunity.”
The happy wife and mother laughs now at the confession from her mother-in-law who was aghast at her son’s online dating venture.
“What if she’s a murderer?” was the line, which is comical when you see photos of petite Lina in her romantic lace wedding dress adorned with dainty rosebuds.

Lina still can’t believe her luck in finding her “good man” on the internet.

“Before I met Alain I never considered myself too lucky in relationships. So I still can't believe the way things worked out in the last 2-3 years. Things are really too good to be true. I really feel like all my potentials have been released. It is amazing how great it is to be with the right person! Alain is really great – a truly wonderful person. I used to call him a dinosaur because I thought people like him are extinct.”

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