Mike and Barbara Barredo

Watching movies and television, basketball and football games are what keep the Barredo couple together.

Barbara, 52, sits beside husband Michael, 54, and describes the scenes playing out on the screen as he listens to the audio feed. Or she dishes out a running account of what?s going on in the basketball court of the football field.

Mike has been blind for the past 30 years. He lost his sight in a car accident in 1979, just a year after they were married. Since then, Barbara has provided him with a vision, literally and otherwise. She has always been supportive, says this world president of the International Blind Sports Federation and president of the Phil. Sports Association for the Differently Abled.

For this couple, love may be blind but that hasn?t stopped them from seeing only the best in each other.

Ging and Rose
?Will smile for food? was the caption on the photo of Ging Cristobal on the social networking site Downelink. Rose Benipayo was intrigued and posted a message, asking for an eyeball.
This was in 2006 when neither was looking for a serious relationship. Except that they found enough common interests, like scooters, to make their relationship ?official.?

It wasn?t easy. Rose?s family could not understand how she could break off with her boyfriend for this woman. Why a lesbian relationship puzzled her mother who refused to speak to her for a month.
Undaunted, the couple gave each other commitment rings in March 2009. Ging says she has always believed in the importance of coming out (about one?s sexual orientation). At the heart of one?s humanity, there are really no differences, she adds.
For Ging and Rose, love isn?t about gender. It is as the Biblical passage says: love is kind, love is patient.

Melyn and Jerson

Melyn Acosta and Jerson Santacera are taking their time shopping for a wedding gown at the Tutuban Mall in Divisoria. After all, they?ve waited eight years before finally deciding to tie the knot.

The two met during a basketball tournament in 2001 and started texting each other, until Jerson decided to bring her home to meet his parents. Still, they kept their relationship secret for some time because Melyn?s father has always been overprotective of his only daughter.

But that?s something that Melyn understands, as one of the close-in photographers of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The couple has set their altar date on Nov. 13, 2010 at the Santo Domingo Church in Quezon City.

BGen. Felix Brawner Jr. and Dr. Rita Palma Brawner

It?s not easy being an Army wife. Just ask Rita Palmer Brawner, who?s been married to BGen Felix Brawner Jr. for 48 years now.

To augment her husband?s pay, she taught at UST and other private schools for a long time. She even ran a garments business to support their growing family.

She is supportive in other ways, General Brawner says, recalling how, at the height of the NPA insurgency in the early 70s when he was stationed in Isabela, Mrs. Brawner boosted his troops? morale by gathering donations and asking her students to make personalized gifts and letters for them for Christmas.

These days, the Brawners spend their time singing in charity concerts and musicales to raise funds for sick and injured soldiers. He?s a baritone, she?s a soprano, and they make beautiful music together.

Drs. Dexter and Rose Cheng

She thought him arrogant and baduy, he saw her as this chubby little girl who wore hairclips with teddybear and pink crayon designs.

All that changed when the two became groupmates on 24-hour hospital duty in med school. Now married for nine years, obstetrician Dr. Maria Rosario Cheng and pediatric cardiologist Dr. Dexter Eugene Cheng consider themselves as best friends.

Already, they envision themselves like the elderly couples that they admire and observe all the time: constantly holding hands in public and remaining young at heart.

TJ and Mia

He is quiet and reserved, she loves to socialize and giggles a lot in the midst of conversations.

But TJ Estrada who teaches math subjects at the Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University in Agoo, La Union, finds that he can?t last a forthnight without seeing girlfriend Miamarie ?Mia? Gerona who lives and works in Metro Manila.

Texting, voice calls and online chatting aren?t enough, he says, to keep their long-distance relationship going. So twice, sometimes thrice a month, he travels at least five hours by provincial bus from La Union to Manila to visit her.

She responds in kind, once visiting his grandma in Cainta to help her clean up after Typhoon Ondoy ravaged her house. She also gifted TJ with a framed picture of himself with his hand raised in an ?L? sign (for ?Laban? ? fight!), and wearing a yellow shirt. It was taken right after the People Power revolt, when he was one year old.

He values their future, she values his past. And they make time to share both.