Love and relationships on the streets of Perth

Mason and Zuza: The hot cousin and the older woman

ZUZA: I met Mason when he came to work at Il Lido in Cottesloe. I’d already been there for two years and wanted to see the new boy, who I’d already heard about because he was related to a friend of mine. I had to come in to work to meet “the hot cousin”.

MASON: When we started working together we both eye-locked. Even when we were busy we couldn’t stop looking at each other. Whenever I turned around she was staring at me and whenever she turned around I was staring at her.

“What I’ve learned is that love is mutual. Before I met Zuza I didn’t know how to go about a relationship. She showed me it is a two-way street.”

ZUZA: One night Mason came to a dinner at Il Lido I was having with a group of friends. It was all very polite. But the minute Mason and I were alone everything changed. We just clicked.

MASON: During the car ride home Zuza became like a different person. We were finally talking one-on-one and her personality flourished. She was so much fun. We just couldn’t stop talking. We have now been together non-stop for the past four months.

ZUZA: I’m two years older than Mason— I’m 20 and he’s 18 — so when we started dating a few of my friends said things to me. Nothing too horrible. They warned me that he might be a bit immature. I think Mason liked the idea of going out with “the older woman”.

MASON: I had a pact to remain single through year 12 and enjoyed not being tied to anyone. So I thought that if I go into a relationship it wouldn’t be just for the sake of it: it would have to be with a really good person. Just as year 12 ended, Zuza walked into my life.

ZUZA: It works because we love doing the same things, and we love doing them together. We love going to the beach and exercising. We’re both addicted to the outdoors/beachy lifestyle.

MASON: I’m someone who can’t stop moving. And so is Zuza. If the weather is nice, we’ll grab the jetski and take it or go to Rotto or drive down to Margaret River. She is very spontaneous, which I love.

ZUZA: Mason is unlike any other guy I’ve dated. He is always upbeat. He never stops smiling and is rarely grumpy.

MASON: Zuza’s looks got me straight away. She’s perfect. And her personality is just as wonderful. We talk for hours and never get bored. We always have something to talk about and there’s never an awkward moment.

ZUZA: Mason has a soft, romantic side which makes him very different from most Australian guys. We talk about love and romance and emotions all the time and watch romantic movies together. And we love seeing elderly couples together.

MASON: I have to admit at the beginning I was a bit resistant opening up emotionally. But we are a partnership and this is what she wants. I want Zuza to do the same for me, so I was happy to open up.

ZUZU: This relationship has taught me that you will know when somebody loves you. I never knew whether a boy liked me or not. Mason has taught me that if someone loves you, it will be obvious. You will get on and there won’t be any game-playing.

MASON: What I’ve learned is that love is mutual. Before I met Zuza I didn’t know how to go about a relationship. She showed me it is a two-way street. She really wanted me to open up more, which I was happy to do because I know she’ll do something for me.

All systems Go: Rob and Sibylla

ROB: I met Sibylla in Singapore in 1983 when we were both backpacking in South-East Asia. I had just quit the merchant navy after taking a ship from Athens to Sydney and was doing some travelling before going back to England to study. One night I crashed at a cheap hotel and was playing Go with a guy I’d just met. Sibylla walked in and I looked up and thought, “Wow! She’s pretty hot”.

SIBYLLA: I was travelling with a girl from Switzerland who knew the guy Rob was playing Go with. I thought he was very handsome. The next day we met at a swimming pool — I guess that was our first date — and then we started travelling together. After a week on the road, I asked Rob to marry me and he said no.

“A successful relationship is all about give and take. It’s not going to be wonderful all the time. You just have to compromise if you want to keep your marriage together.”

ROB: We travelled together for months, so we spent a lot of time in each other’s company. In fact, we spent the whole time together. Couples wouldn’t normally spend 24 hours with each other in the first month of a relationship. The spark was there — we both loved travelling and I shared her values — but it was the circumstances that pushed the relationship along so quickly.

SIBYLLA: I was serious about our relationship right from the start. Then travelling together for three months and then Rob coming to see me in Germany just two weeks after we got back to Europe proved to me that this was a relationship that would change my life.

ROB: We married after five years living together and migrated to Australia in 1995 and had two children. But we only married because it made migration easier. We were committed to each other whether we were married or not.

SIBYLLA: There have been ups and downs over the years, but it was nothing serious. It was difficult when the children arrived because we didn’t have any support. But this is a situation faced by a lot of people who migrate to Australia.

ROB: I’ve never really broken down why our marriage has worked so well. It sounds like a ridiculous thing to say, but I guess I’ve always taken it for granted.

SIBYLLA: A successful relationship is all about give and take. It’s not going to be wonderful all the time. You just have to compromise if you want to keep your marriage together.

ROB: Sybilla has had a quite big influence on my ideas of politics and religion. As a kid, you have views strongly shaped by your parents. When you get married those views get challenged by the person you spend all your time with. I’m sure my ideas have shaped her, but generally I feel my attitudes have been shaped by her.

SIBYLLA: The longer you are in a relationship the deeper the bond grows. We have been married for 40 years, so there is so much shared experience. Our lives are so interwoven and so interconnected that we are a unit.

ROB: I can’t imagine not being with Sibylla.

Dancing in the moonlight: Wolfie and Ghang

WOLFIE: We met four years ago. I had just come from Poland, and I was staying at a youth hostel. One night everyone from the hostel went down to a skate park. It was there I first saw Ghang. He was skating and doing his own thing and I thought, “Wow!” It wasn’t just his physical beauty: there seemed to be a light shining on him. He had an aura.

“Love is not enough. You could love someone and be in the wrong season of your life. I was mindful that before I told Wolfie I loved her it had to be right for me and for her.”

GHANG: I heard some music and could see out of the right side of my peripheral vision a gorgeous woman in a dress dancing. I thought, “Who is this stunning woman dancing in the middle of the night?” I kept looking at her, but she avoided eye contact with me, so I thought it wasn’t going to happen.

WOLFIE: One of the other girls in the hostel was talking to Ghang about skating. She wasn’t interested in skating; she was flirting with him. I thought they looked great together and I didn’t have a chance. But when we shook hands our eyes met and everyone around us disappeared and left us alone.

GHANG: We talked for hours. I was going through a dark time. I was in the middle of a mental health crisis and working through old traumas. I am very open about it because it acts as a filter. It’s better that people know. Wolfie was fine with it.

WOLFIE: I didn’t know many people with mental health issues, but I had problems with my own family. So I completely understood what he was going through. At the end of the night Ghang asked if he could kiss me and I said yes.

GHANG: But we didn’t get together immediately. I thought it wasn’t fair to invest in a relationship because of what I was going through. My heart was saying yes, but my mind was saying no.

WOLFIE: We kept in touch, but we kept avoiding each other because we both knew what was happening was much bigger than either of us were capable of handling.

GHANG: One day I went to get a coffee and Wolfie happened to be the barista. I thought, “this is the universe telling us to be together”. But we still avoided each other. Then a week later we ran into each other at the beach. It was the third time in three weeks. The universe was determined for us to be a couple!

WOLFIE: After bumping into each other twice in a week I decided it was time to message Ghang and arrange a date. So I took the initiative.

GHANG: We didn’t move in together for about a year because we were both uncertain about a relationship. We had both been hurt by past relationships and had come from such unhealthy family structures that we took things very slowly.

WOLFIE: Ghang told me he loved me after we had been seeing each other for six months. It was early in our relationship, so it surprised me. But it was fine. I was being loved by this beautiful human being.

GHANG: Love is not enough. You could love someone and be in the wrong season of your life. I was mindful that before I told Wolfie I loved her it had to be right for me and for her.

WOLFIE: Love is infinite and can always go deeper. But at the moment I can’t imagine loving anyone more than I love this man.

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