The unusual love story between a 23-year-old woman from China’s Hebei Province and an 80-year-old man she met at a nursing home sparked a heated debate in Chinese society.

23-year-old Xiaofang (pseudonym), met the love of her life while working as a volunteer at a retirement home in Hebei Province. 80-year-old Mr. Li (pseudonym) was a resident there and the two quickly became friends after realizing that they shared many interests and hobbies. But, as time went by, their friendship evolved into something more, as Xiaofang was attracted by Mr. Li’s maturity, stability, and wisdom, while he was moved by Xiaofang’s youthful vitality and kindness. Unfortunately, the young girl’s family did not approve of her romantic relationship with a man old enough to be her grandfather, but she decided to follow her heart and severed ties with her parents to be with Mr. Li.

Read More »

In what can only be described as an unconventional love story, an Indian man fell in love and ended up marrying his mother-in-law with his father-in-law’s blessing.

This bizarre tale begins with a tragedy. After the death of Sikandar Yadav’s wife, the father-of-two moved in with his in-laws in Bihar’s Heer Moti village. Over time, the relationship between 45-year-old Sikandar and his mother-in-law, Geeta (55), evolved into a romantic affair that they could only conceal for so long. As rumors of their secret affair started spreading through the village, Geeta’s husband became increasingly suspicious and one day caught the two lovebirds in a romantic embrace that confirmed his fears. Furious, the man brought the affair to the attention of the Panchayat (village council), demanding that the matter be resolved.

Read More »

A 19-year-old man and a 56-year-old grandmother-of-three in Thailand have been making international news headlines after getting engaged to be married.

Wuthichai Chantaraj, 19, met his fiance, Janla Namuangrak, 56, almost 10 years ago, when the woman moved next to his family home in the Akat Amnuay district of Thailand’s Sakhon Nakhon province. Their first real interaction occurred when Janla asked the 10-year-old boy to help her move some potted plants, and from that day on Wuthichai would often drop by the divorced woman’s house to play and help her with chores. The two describe their early relationship as a friendship, but when Wuthichai turned 17, he started developing feelings for Janla, and they eventually became a couple. They only announced their romance to their families at the start of this year, and their love story has been making headlines in Thailand ever since.

Read More »

A Vietnamese man had to be rescued by a Thai fishing boat after attempting to cross the Andaman Sea in an inflatable boat in order to search for his wife.

On Wednesday, March 23rd, the Royal Thai Navy received a report from the captain of a fishing trawler about a small inflatable boat they had spotted in the Andaman Sea, about 80 kilometers from the shore. Apparently, there was a man inside with some luggage, an almost empty tank of drinking water and some instant noodles. The man didn’t speak Thai or English, and fearing that he could get himself killed, the fishing boat decided to tow him and his boat back to safety.

Read More »

An Indian woman who had left her family home in 2010 and hadn’t been seen since was recently found living just 500 meters from her parent’s home, in the house of a man she had fallen in love with.

Sajitha’s family had given up home of ever finding her, after she simply walked out of the house one day, in 2010. Thinking that she had died or was living thousands of miles away somewhere, they never even entertained the idea that she could be in the same village, let alone in walking distance from them. As it turns out, the woman, who was 18 at the time of her disappearance, simply walked out of the family home and into that of her secret lover, a local man who she was convinced her parents wouldn’t approve of. How they managed to keep the secret from both of their families for over a decade is a tale fit for Bollywood.

Read More »

An Indian man recently left an entire country confused after helping his wife of seven years marry the man she had been having an affair with for years.

Uttam Mandal and Sapna Kumari, from Bhagalpur, in India’s Bihar state, got married in 2014, and had two children together. They were happy together for a while, but at some point Sapna fell in love with a relative of Uttman’s, a younger man who came around their house every once in a while, and the two started having an affair. The husband learned about Sapna’s escapade and they fought over the issue many times, but seeing as Sapna couldn’t get over her lover, Uttman decided to do the unthinkable, step aside and help his wife marry the man she loved.

Read More »

This is a somewhat older story that was originally reported by media primarily in Indonesia and other East-Asian countries back in 2018. It got a lot of attention because it touched on a very taboo topic – the romantic relationship between an adult male teacher and a 13-year-old schoolgirl.

Erwin Pangaila was 27 when he fell in love with a junior high school student at the SMP Negeri 2 Tenga school, in Sulawesi Utara, Indonesia. In fact, it was 13-year-old Vinda Virginia who first noticed and approached him. She happened to walk by his classroom saw him writing on the blackboard and immediately fell for his broad shoulders and athletic physique. She wasn’t the only girl in school to have a crush on Erwin, but she was determined to be the one that won his heart. She started staying behind after classes to ask him questions and eventually, their student-teacher relationship turned into a romantic one.

Read More »

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that the name of Maruyama’s boyfriend was Li Huayu, and that the girl still lost her memory every day, when in reality this only occurred only in the first two months after her accident.  

The touching love story between an amnesia sufferer whose memory was wiped clean every morning and the loyal boyfriend who makes her fall in love with him every day has touched the hearts of millions in Japan.

“50 First Dates”, a 2004 romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, tells the story of a young woman whose short term memory was affected by a car crash. Every morning, her memory resets to the day of the accident, but that doesn’t deter Sandler’s character from making their relationship work, even if it means making her fall in love with him every day. It’s one of the best romantic comedies of all times, in my opinion, but I never imagined that such a love story could exist in real life. Well, a Japanese couple reportedly lived their very own “50 First Dates” romance for to months.

Read More »

The world’s most faithful male is a stork. Every year, for the past 16 years, he has flown 14,000 km from his winter home in South Africa to a small village in Croatia, Europe, to be with his handicapped mate, who cannot fly due to an old gunshot wound.

The amazing love story between Klepetan and Malena has made the two storks celebrities in Croatia. Every March, the male stork flies back to the village of Brodski Varos, where Malena is waiting for him. They mate and have new babies each year, which Klepetan then teaches how to fly, before migrating with them to South Africa. The injured female stays behind, as she cannot fly, but she’s always well taken care of during the cold winter.

Read More »

Indonesian media has been abuzz with the unlikely love story of Ilaria, a young waitress from Italy, and Dzufilkar, a young man from a small village in Central Java. The two reportedly met on Facebook two years ago, and Ilaria has been saving money ever since to be able to meet and marry her soulmate. Her dream recently became a reality.

Internet romances are not exactly uncommon in this day and age, but they rarely involve leaving your old comfortable life behind to fly halfway across the world to a small Indonesian village just to be with the person you love, especially since you’ve never actually met them in person before. But that’s exactly what Ilaria did, after saving up her waitress salary for a couple of years.

Read More »

On January 22, 1977, 24-year-old P.K. Mahanandia set out on a four-month bicycle ride from Delhi, India, to Boras, Sweden, to be with the woman he knew was his soulmate. Their amazing love story became the subject of a best-selling book by Swedish author Per J. Andersson.

Mahanandia met Charlotte Von Schedvin in 1975, completely by chance. He was working as a sketch artist in Connaught Place, a shopping and business hub in Delhi, and Ms. Von Schedvin, from Sweden, was visiting India as a tourist. One day, as she was walking around the city, she noticed a curly young man with a sign that read “a portrait in 10 minutes for 10 rupees” and decided to test the claim. She sat down for a portrait, but something made the man nervous, as his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Disappointed with the result of his drawing but intrigued by the man, she decided to return the next day for a new one, but the result was no better.

The Swedish tourist would later learn that P.K. Mahanandia had very good reason for being nervous. The moment he had laid eyes on her, the artist remembered a prophecy his mother had made when he was only a boy. Mahanandia was a Dalit, the lowest caste in Indian society, and faced discrimination from upper-caste students growing up, so whenever he was said, his mother would tell him that he would someday marry a woman “whose zodiac sign would be Taurus, she would come from a far away land, she would be musical and would own a jungle”. As soon as he saw her, he knew she was the one.

Read More »

They say love knows no boundaries, and the touching story of how a 28-year-old man in Indonesia fell in love with a woman 54 years his senior over the phone and ended up marrying her despite objections from both their families seems to confirm the old saying.

About a year ago, Sofian Loho Dandel, a 28-year-old warehouse worker from the Indonesian island of Mantehage, received a call from an unknown number. Upon answering, he learned that the women on the other end of the line had dialed his number by mistake, while trying to call someone else. Only instead of hanging up and moving on with their lives, the two started making conversation and getting to know each other. Little did either of them know that they were talking to their future spouse.

“A year ago, I received a phone call from an unknown caller, I answered and we came to know each other,” Sofian recently told Indonesian reporters. “Since then, we have constantly kept in contact without knowing her age. I had never dated before, I felt in love.”

Read More »

It may not be the classic fairy-tale romance, but the story of how a British 51-year-old trucker met the love of his live is definitely one for the books. Believe it or not, he just found her number scrawled on the wall of a public toilet.

They say love happens when you least expect it, and that was certainly the case for Mark Ellis, a trucker from Brighhouse, West Yorkshire. He was on his way to meet his friends for a drink at a pub in Garfoth when he decided to stop at a public restroom. While going about his business, he noticed a raunchy message scrawled on one of the toilet walls – “If you want a good shag call Donna on . . . [phone number]”. Mark apparently founded very intriguing, because he ended up texting the mysterious number with the message “Hi. What are you up to?” “I was curious to know if it was a real human being,” he recently told The Sun newspaper. “We still laugh about it.”

Read More »

In the the past 40 years, New Jersey resident Bill Bresnan has written over 10,000 love letters, notes and cards to his wife Kirsten – that’s almost one for each night of their marriage. The couple’s unique love story was recently covered by the media, and Bill and Kirsten, both 74, spoke about the secrets of their successful marriage.

The couple met when Bill was teaching a class back in 1974, and Kirsten happened to be his student. “She was this beautiful Northern European woman who struck me like a bolt of lightning,” Bill said in an interview with ABC News.

“Not long after meeting in class Kirsten and I began commuting to and from Long Island, together, on the Long Island Railroad.” And that’s when the practice of writing notes began. “We exchanged notes, drawings, and little scribblings on paper napkins over coffee on the train.”

Read More »

A 47-year-old Chinese woman is so happy to have found true love that she hasn’t taken off her wedding dress for the past ten years. You might think that’s crazy, but wait till you hear everything she’s been through. At age 18, Xiang Junfeng was kidnapped from her hometown and sold to an elderly man. She was forced to marry him and lived for 15 years in captivity before she found the courage to run away.

A native of Jimo, in China’s Shandong Province, Xiang was sold to a man in the neighboring city of Linyi. He ended up using her as a slave, putting her to work in the fields. After several years of living in captivity, she managed to escape by running to Liujiazhuang village where a local woman helped her. Eventually, the woman turned out to be Xiang’s savior in more than one way. She introduced Xiang to her own brother, Zhu Zhengliang, and the couple tied the knot in 2004. This event made poor Xiang so happy that she’s refused to wear anything but her wedding attire ever since.

Although she got married with just the one dress, Xiang later had three more made – one for each season. “I bought one and made the other three,” she said. “I had only ever known a violent and abusive man and I avoided men until I met my new partner who brought me truly out of my shell and treated me so differently. I couldn’t believe it when he asked me to marry him.”

Read More »