“There are things worth trying”: A three-year courtship ended and she left with a stranger

A trip, one of many she enjoyed as an adventurer, led Liesbet Collaert to tour North America in a camper with Karl, her partner, whom she had met in Australia. That journey led her, without looking for it, to true love.

Liesbet Collaert, 28, was in San Francisco, California, when her love life changed in an instant. The feeling that united her with Karl disappeared when she fell in love with another man. “She couldn’t get the idea out of her head that she was meant to be with him.”

This Belgian-born woman spent three years with Karl, an American. But life surprised her in 2004 and her story was published by CNN en Español.

Love with Mark

In San Francisco, a friend of Karl opened the doors of his house to them. Nik, an acquaintance of Karl, had converted his building into three apartments. Liesbet stayed there with her boyfriend.

The woman told CNN that when she went to look for a CD, she went to the patio where she found two dogs. What this adventurer could never have imagined happened. While she was playing with the dogs, the owner of those pets appeared, the man who attracted her from the first moment.

Mark Kilty, as he introduced himself, “was tall, dark and very attractive.” He captivated her from the start and that first time they talked for an hour. That 33-year-old engineer, who had just gotten out of a divorce, seemed “intelligent and very articulate.”

Mark was also not indifferent to her. “Probably the first thing that attracted me to her was her free spirit and her willingness to risk a structured, normal life for a good experience,” he told CNN Travel.

I was very intrigued by his lifestyle and what he was able to achieve with relatively little money, and how much he had been able to see places, go places and experience things.

Mark Kilty

Mark was a good friend of Nik and the four of them often went out for a few days.

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“Mark was a sailor and took us all sailing. The group came together,” she said.

Love surprised them both. In just three weeks, she was given the enormous obligation to decide what to do with Karl, with whom she initially planned to go to California and then to Mexico.

The night before she left, she and Mark were left alone in his apartment. They were talking about their years in college when they first kissed.

“If you ever break up with Karl, let me know where you are and where you are and I will come and see you,” Mark told her.

Before Liesbet left for California, she couldn’t bear it anymore and decided to speak up.

– “I have feelings for Mark”, said. “I think I’ll come back here someday.”

Karl, of course he was shocked. But he accepted it with maturity.

-‘If you think you’re coming back, you better stay’ he replied.

They went to the bank, split the money and Karl left alone in the camper. “I cried,” Liesbet remembered.

Thus ended three years of coexistence between Liesbet and Karl.

Lives with Mark

Unbelievable that after only three weeks she decided to bet on how she felt about Mark.

Mark was the other big surprise: “I decided to stay” she told him when she told him she had broken up with Karl.

After all, starting such a new relationship was not easy. “In the past I had left my friends behind for my travels. With Mark it was the opposite: I gave up my travels for a man.”

Liesbet said that in 2005 she tried to accompany Mark on his sea adventure. He had applied for an extension of his visa and wanted to overcome his fear of water. Could not. He kept getting dizzy and Mark’s dogs, who had also boarded the sailboat, couldn’t get used to it.

Two days later the adventure was cut short. They bought a camper and their first long trip was to Central America. A year on the road… they reached Panama.

On the way to Texas, where she was experiencing a ‘honeymoon period’, doubts arose and Liesbet felt that a break-up with Mark would be inevitable, the media reported above. When they arrived in Honduras, Mark said he wanted to end the relationship.

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Reunion with Karl

They both arrived in Texas and had contacted Karl, Liesbet’s ex-boyfriend. Time passed for him too… he tried his luck in love with someone else.

Karl opened the doors of his home in Austin to Mark and Liesbet. Unfortunately, these two things didn’t go well.

From one day to the next, Mark made his own decision: he left without warning and she didn’t know if he would return. Three days passed and suddenly he received a call from him.

“I really regret my decision,” Mark told him. “I want us to start over.” They gave themselves another chance and it worked for them.

Cancer

In 2014, Mark was diagnosed with breast cancer. A sister of hers had died from that disease the previous year and the depression was taking its toll.

“The first few weeks were a roller coaster of emotions,” said Mark.

As a couple, they supported each other during the illness.

Mark and Liesbet have been together for almost twenty years. They continue to travel the world together. They document their travels on their blog, Roaming About, and Liesbet has also published a memoir titled “Plunge – One Woman’s Pursuit of a Life Less Ordinary.”

They still see themselves as a strong team. Liesbet looks in the rearview mirror of her life and says there are things worth trying.

They got married in 2007 and several things changed. They worked like freelancers Along the way they bought a more stable catamaran and so she was able to accompany him as he “sailed to the Bahamas and then to the Dominican Republic. Later they sailed through the Panama Canal and reached the Galapagos Islands into French Polynesia.”

“I can’t imagine anyone else with whom I would have lived the last twenty years of my life and this adventure that we have experienced,” says Mark, the engineer for whom Liesbet embarked on the most unexpected adventure: that of true love.

For more information on this story, visit his blog

With information from CNN in Spanish

(JO)