Jenine after the loving

The problem with Jenine Desiderio is she falls in love too hard she ends up holding the short end of the stick when the relationship fizzles out. She’s the first to give way when trouble looms (read: a girl enters the picture), thinking that her significant other deserves someone better.

And so, when estranged husband Juan Miguel Salvador of the Rage Band met this girl and promised Jenine the relationship will stop eventually (it persists to this day), the singer-actress kept her cool. Today, Jenine still remembers the happy times of their four-year marriage, blessed as she is with a daughter to remind her of it. But she swears she has learned to let go.

"I harbor no grudge against him," Jenine says of her husband. "I love unconditionally. A relationship must be two-way."

Now all she has from the broken marriage, aside from her nine-year-old daughter, is a song she herself wrote at the heyday of their relationship. Habang Buhay, one of the cuts in her second album, J9, under Universal Records.

The song no longer brings tears to her eyes everytime she performs it. Jenine was dry-eyed when she performed the song in her album launch. And she can now discuss what the haunting lyrics mean to her without her voice cracking.

"I wrote it many years ago. It’s a song of gratitude for all he’s done for me. Remember, Juan Miguel used to be my musical director," Jenine says.

Another song in the album, Di Na Kita Ma-Reach, sounds more upbeat, less sentimental. It uses colloquial Taglish to hook today’s listeners. But behind the casual tone is another painful story which Jenine, now wiser in the ways of love, poured out in her own words and lyrics.

Jenine admits shyly that it touches on her failed romance with a showbiz guy whose face is seen on a billboard along EDSA. The relationship lasted all of two years but then again, Jenine reasoned out they are meant for each other. He’s younger, and she understands – again.

"I’m 34, and most men my age are already married," she reasons out.

Her Miss Saigon days were just as colorful, romance-wise. She was 19 then. As Kim, she had to kiss her leading man, Simon Bowman as Chris, show after show. The frequent kissing scenes turned for real, and they found themselves falling in love.

Simon had then broken up with his American girlfriend.

When Jenine returned to the Philippines, she hang on to her British boyfriend’s promise that he will follow her and guest in her show. But fate rudely intervened again. Simon’s girlfriend returned from the US, and they reconciled. When he didn’t show up in Jenine’s concert, she understood.

"It was hard for both of us," Jenine recalls. Simon and Jenine can’t bear having a kissing scene in the show when both are holding back a torrent of feelings for each other. Simon quit the show and Jenine resigned soon after.

True, that Miss Saigon experience brought painful memories. But it also gave Jenine rich rewards. She received a royalty when the Miss Saigon album was released. Her earnings from playing Kim also gave her a condominium unit and a car.

Now on her own, Jenine has no reason to feel like someone left to lick her wounds in silence. She will soon have an extensive radio promo tour, TV guestings, pocket concerts and other promotional sorties to drum up interest for J9 (a nickname she assumed in high school, when people kept misspelling her name). Jenine also has her hands full with workouts, belly dancing classes, cooking and friends.

Her daughter is doing well in school, thank you. And although DOMs have come up with proposals, Jenine is proud to say she has resisted all of them.

"I worked hard for every single thing I own," she says, head held high.

Spoken like a true Superwoman, the top feminist anthem she popularized in the late ’90s, not only in song, but in her every deed.