In sickness and in health?

I can imagine somebody’s being low enough to do this, but I honestly can’t imagine someone’s being willing to admit it in a public forum, even anonymously.

If i loved them and they were The One, I would stick with them to the end.
If it was a relationship just started or looked like it was going pear shaped, i would end it.
No affairs needed.

I am biased on this one, since I’ve been there. He had already asked for a divorce, but after the diagnosis, his ‘fiance’ moved away with no forwarding address, and we stayed together until the bitter end.

This is one of those things that upsets me so much it makes me feel physically ill even when it happens in fiction. When I see/hear of it happening in real life it absolutely breaks my heart. :( I can’t imagine leaving someone I love when they’re most in need of a support system. That’s fucking heinous.

* In sickness and in health means just that. Leaving a sick loved one alone to fight their demons is a shitty thing to do!

*Ambien lol

I am not the nurse type, but I would never leave him because he was sick. If I couldn’t take care of him I would find a way to have him taken care of.

I also think it is so important for a person to be able to die in their own home. I would do my damnedest to see that It could be.

Oy vey! What ever happened to good ol’ In sickness and in health?

I’m going to go with the amazing Death Cab for this:

“But I’m thinking of what Sarah said, that “Love is watching someone die””

Here’s a link to the video and lyrics. (Sorry, it’s depressing as hell, but then again, so’s the song.)

If you’re not willing to stick with someone while they are ill or dying, than you didn’t love them very much in the first place.

All I know is my mom’s had breast cancer twice and skin cancer once and despite the fact that she was at one point bald and (is still) breastless my father never seemed to have any trouble sticking around.

It’s sad to see that’s not the case with other families, though. :|

(Although I remember some of my parents’ friends stopped visiting since the initial diagnosis.)

I’ve been thinking about a lot of stuff lately, and this great question ties in to some of it.

I think it’s really easy to blame the “well” person for these things. On the surface, any one of us with feelings would say “oh, that’s horrible that that well person left the sick person”. But I’ve had some stuff go on in my life in the past few years that make me wonder about the validity of this…are we just jumping to conclusions? Probably not, sometimes, but I think other times maybe so.

The first thing that happened was my divorce. I never got married planning on divorce, but after a bunch of years, well, let’s just say people do grow apart. I’ve observed as a divorcee who still must interact with my community that there are a ton of people out there who are generally speaking happy people, but anywhere from moderately to very unhappy in their marriage. I’ve realized that it’s nearly impossible to know what people’s motivation is to stay together. I wanted to stay together for my own reasons, but my ex did not, and that finally broke up our relationship.

Stick with me here…

The other thing is, I’ve done a lot of thinking about our lives as holistic beings, attached to our community, attached to our food supply, attached to our personal energy and that of others, and attached to our universe. From what I’m starting to believe, I don’t think it’s beyond the human body to make itself sick to get out of a bad situation. I’m not saying this is always the case, but I do believe the body will do a lot to protect itself, and sometimes…if that seems the only way out…then who knows.

That said, all 3 examples above are politicians, and their wives. Who knows how good those relationships were, and what forces were in place to try to keep those relationships together? I’m sure we all have opinions about politicians and their wives, but who’s to say which of the partners in those 3 relationships was the actual driver behind the divorce?

Sorry, I’ve been rambling on, so I’ll stop now. Hopefully this is food for thought…for somebody.

Slightly off topic, but not really. This very thing is what bothers me about those silly little girls who think they want to be military wives. The ones who chase after guys in uniform, hanging out in the bars outside bases, so that they can be seen to have the title and the sympathy and the benefits. What is the absolute worst thing about these girls is that they have no intention of sticking about when the going gets tough. The would rather their husband get killed (and have the death benefits paid to them) than come back maimed because they have no intention or ability to stick around and deal with that kind of thing. This is by no means descriptive of most military wives, just a particular type that are reprehensible and become more and more common as the war wears on. They are also the type that marry, get pregnant, and then get divorced because they can keep the benefits until the soldier remarries and use the child for blackmail to make sure that doesn’t happen and the money keeps coming in.

Sorry for going off on a tangent, but that is what came to mind when I read the title of the question.

@absalom {{{Hugs}}}

@NewZen

Thank you :] I’m thankful those troubles have passed.

I would absolutely never leave my s/o during what may be the most difficult time of their life. That’s wrong on so many levels.

One doesn’t have to be married to understand that you stick by your loved one even if they lose their faculties

Before I met my wife, I had a significant other who I had been living with for around four years. She had endometriosis—or anyway, was in the process of be diagnosed with it. I don’t think I was very supportive, and I suspect that her illness had something to do with us breaking up. There was a lot of tension there.

We weren’t married, but I still felt guilty for the way I behaved with her. I don’t think I had any responsibility to stay with her, though. It may have been very painful, but it wasn’t life threatening.

I’ve been getting better at being a nursemaid. I’ve done it numerous times with my wife—for both pleasant (birth) and unpleasant reasons (surgery). I would not leave her if she were sick, but it would be a miserable experience helping her through a long illness. I’m not sure I could make it without some relief—a vacation or something every once in a while.

Hideous. My dad married my mom knowing she had MS and he sat with her for 4 days while she died. He did leave us all for about 5 years, but he came back and took care of my mom 24/7, for 4 years, until the day she died.

There are a lot of things I can say about my father – not all of them good – but I’ll give the old man this. From the day my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer he was there for her. He held her hand, shuttled her back and forth to chemo, took care of the house and kids the best he could, and above all kept his promise to let her die at home. This was back in the 70’s before the idea of at home hospice care was popular. He was holding her hand when she died and wouldn’t have had it any other way. I hope that if I am ever faced with a similar situation I can handle it the way my father did.

dunno its one of those things where i would have to be faced with the situation to truly know how i would react even though I like to think I would stay…there maybe things i do not currently understand that might make me leave

@avvooooooo, I’m just not tuned in enough to the military life to have heard stories like that, but that’s very upsetting. Not everything can be helped by media attention, but if someone could write a good screenplay with that kind of storyline, it would wake a lot of people up.

@Jeruba Its not well known. But if you enter any bar that caters to soldiers close to a base, especially large ones like Fort Hood, you will find these parasites. There are ones in the foreign countries around US bases where they parasites are looking for green cards. And there’s a large group that are looking for people to play daddy to their kids and ones that want an instant family, because they’re looking at deployment and maybe not getting to have a family of their own, get sucked in. But the fact that they seduce these guys (Who are stupid. But why wouldn’t they be? They’re male.) with the sole intention of sucking them dry and the hope that they won’t come back from deployment is sickening to me.

My ex is married to a dependent personality disorder psycho chick with a kid. This was her third marriage… at age 18. Got sucked in by instant family. It is pretty much guaranteed that she’s cheating in him while he’s deployed… I’m just waiting for the kid to slip up and tell him about his ‘deployment daddy” so he learns that what I warned him about was nothing but the truth. But then I won’t hear about it directly, because I told him to never contact me again for various reasons.

@avvooooooo My son got caught by one of those. She ran off with another sailor, and took everything they owned while he was on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Indian ocean. He had to file for bankruptcy because of the thousands of dollars of debt she had racked up with his power of atty, and then get a divorce without any knowledge of her whereabouts (her mother finally got ‘her’ signature on the divorce papers)

Hmm I am not married and have never have been. I work with the sick elderly. I have seen it happen both ways and prefer not to cast judgement. Many of them have dementia or Alzheimer’s and might not recognize their spouse. Many go through changes of personality. Is a person a collection of memories and thoughts especially after their bodies have faded? It is never easy doing what is morally or socially acceptable and that is not taking into account the pain associated with being with that spouse. I say do what you can to be able to live with yourself. It is a personal decision. I used to judge but now I feel I have more
perspective. And I am able to empathize with both parties.

I feel it relevant to add that I have autoimmune hepatitis meaning my body attacks my liver its not going away I have cirrhosis of the liver and for clarify i don’t drink. My docs told me I will need a liver transplant in the future. I was being diagnosed when my boyfriend of three years left me and yes i was angry and bitter but there were other issues going on and he didn’t leave me for that reason alone. Being sick might have contributed to some of the issues going on but I really don’t feel it relevant. I think it was a good decision. And yes its scary and my family tries to be there and they do a great job but no can understand or be there or we are for the most part born alone and we will die alone. As long as there is some support group available to you, you have something to be grateful for.