Truths just want to come out. Thus, sometimes they find quite miraculous ways.

"I Have a Lover" features Makjang. However, the KDrama also and above all offers an unusual love story over 50 episodes.

It also tells about the creeping drama of marriage after the 'point of no return', when secrets and/or feelings of guilt, disappointment and reproaches have long barricaded the couple's way to each other and marriage has become a stale shell or facade, with hardly any space for dear affection left. Eventually, with all those hidden emotions it becomes increasingly difficult to lovingly respond to each other. At last, it may seem impossible to pave a new way towards renewed trust, closeness and genuine intimacy.

Moreover, "I Have a Lover" tells about the trauma that couples as parents suffer from the loss of their child. This KDrama is about painful emotions not being shared, getting in the way of a trusting, loving, intimate relationship. In the most desperate moments the one you need the most seems the furthest away. Missing a comforting connection makes it even worse. Finally, the insincerity leads towards sadness, anger or even indifference and detachment regarding the hollow relationship.

Drawing human characters with their shadows and radiance, the KDrama tells of the whole range of emotions people have and share in intimate relationships. "I Have a Lover" portrays an extraordinary character development process. Will the couple thus be able to reconnect?

The side plots add to the sophisticatedly composed symphony of complex, conflicting emotional worlds. It's about pain and hope, disappointment and forgiveness, sincere love and betrayal, above all about romantic love, but beyond that about love in all possible facets. Family in its ambivalence as bonding and bondage, as an ambiguous place of trust and obligation, forms a creeping leitmotif that holds all the narrative strings together.

The scenarios effortlessly switch between different living environments. The focus is also on lawyers - those 'footmen' serving the elite big corporations and those 'upright' serving the little folks.

At first, I wasn't sure if I wanted to follow an exhausting relationship between estranged spouses for 50 episodes. But it quickly became apparent that the story and its two perfectly harmonizing leads invite you to depart on a wonderfully refined emotional trek through the human emotional worlds.

"I Have a Lover" is touching, moving, stirring, rousing, exciting. It is Makjang, yes. It is Rom+/-Com, and more. Fabulous.


Ps:
The KDrama (despite the 50 episodes) suits for a rewatch, as many aspects and details might then become even more meaningful...