No, I don’t mean the Biblical character, or even Lazarus Long. Yes, this is another Rhymer hypothetical. Here’s the sitch:
Through whatever contrivances you care to postulate, you come to suspect that the person you’ve been dating is much, much older than they appear–by a factor of at least a hundred. Confronted with this suspicion, your lover hesitates for the barest moment, then admits that you’re right. Your lover was born in the first century AD (but is not certain of the year). For the first twenty years or so of life, everything seemed to be normal; but from that point forward it was clear that your lover was not the average bear, aging far, far slower than the average person. Your lover has done quite a bit of research and estimates that, physiologically, they’ve aged about five years over the last two centuries.
Other than the extremely slow aging and some attendant qualities – apparent immunity to infection, perfect teeth and hair, rapid-but-not-Wolverinish healing rate – your lover is not super-human. A few grim and unpleasant encounters with ruthless scientist types have convinced the lover to stay undercover; they’ve changed names many times and currently has several back-up identities prepared in case of the worst. (Of course, this implies that the lover has a lot of money squirreled away too.) Over the centuries, the lover has been married many times and also borne/fathered nearly a thousand children. By the lover’s reckoning, about 5% of those have inherited the slow-aging thing, though none to the degree that the lover did; the oldest of these lived to be about 200. The rest all either had normal lifespans or died violently before it was clear which category they would fall into.
Assuming that the lover is otherwise someone you would be willing to make a life with, are you willing to continue the relationship? Why or why not?
Oh, and I missed the editing window, so I’ll add here that the lover is NOT a vampire or any other such thing. She or he eats, drinks, sleeps, and reacts to sunlike just like everyone else.
I would. I’d be grateful I (probably) wouldn’t live to see him decline and die, frankly. I’m selfish like that. As long as he was okay with the knowledge that someday he’d see me die, I’d marry him.
Plus, can you imagine some of the stories he’d have? Even if he wasn’t a mover and shaker in politics/science/popular culture, he’d have observed it. He’d know how to do stuff that fascinates me (and not just in the bedroom! ). I’d just have to tell him to knock it off when he complained about the prices of things nowadays…I don’t care if bread was 10 coppers a loaf when you were a kid, pony up the $2.50 and lets get out of the store!
My fiance is 22 years older than I am; he could be 2200 and I’d still love him.
Oh, and I forgot about the children part. I would not have biological children with this man, because I don’t think that effective immortality is a decision I want to make for someone else. Maybe they’d love it, maybe they’d hate it, but I don’t want to get tangled up in that decision. Besides, I’m past my baby-making days anyhow! But, hypothetically assuming I wanted more kids, I’d be fine with having children with him by in vitro from a sperm donor, adoption, etc.
Sure, but this guy’s 2000-something, so it’s possible it could happen. 5% of “hundreds” isn’t a very large sample yet, so he may not truly know the limits.
Every time we have a thread on “would you want immortality”, at *least *half the respondents (including me) are all, “heck no, I’d get bored and hate watching everyone I love die!” So if there’s a 5% chance his biological child will inherit that trait, and half of them would be miserable as a result, I’m not going to do it when there are perfectly reasonable alternatives to have children (who will doubtless hate me for other, perfectly normal, reasons) together, if that’s what we want.
I chose to tell you something that you left out. I would marry her, but I don’t know about having children. Simply because I don’t know whether or not I’d like to have children, having resolved to a.) not think too hard about it until I’m engaged, and b.) play it safe in the bedroom until then.
It would be kind of cool to know that one or more of my offspring might carry my memory more than 300 years after my death, though. Of course, Methuselah would carry it even farther.
All of the above is said under the assumption that she has managed to stay (mostly) sane over all those years. If her time sense has altered to the point where normal human lives flash before her like lightning, I probably wouldn’t be able to handle it.
Seems unlikely that she’d be put off by your diffidence on the children issue. I mean, she probably plans on outliving you anyway. And if her aging is slower than yours by a factor of 0.0025, even being married to you for fifty years is not a significant amount of her lifespace; she’s not hearing any ticking of the biological clock yet.
As for the time sense issue, I don’t see how she can avoid a change in perception, but I also am unsure that it’d be an issue for you. It’s likely to make her seem extraordinaly patient by an ephemeral’s POV. What problems do you foresee.
Just too odd to deal with. I’m nothing but a flirtation to someone that old. And after birthing 1000 children, well, it explains some things. Sorry, time to end it now. Unless she looks like Megan Fox. In that case we can remain friends with benefits.
Right. This is just something that I can’t honestly answer, as I am not sure of it myself.
If her perception is so warped that she ofter seems confused (calling me by the name of men long dead, talking about current events that transpired when Napoleon ruled France, etc.) I simply wouldn’t be able to deal with it. If her time sense has kept pace with her aging, there would be no problem.
Well, he’s 2000 years old. Probably he learned how not to be patronizing sometime during the French Revolution, while working hard to avoid finding out if he could survive the guillotine.
But if you’ve been there and done that, it’s pretty hard to take it so seriously the second, tenth, hundredth time, isn’t it? Our experiences change us, I hope, and thsi person would have more experiences, more change, than the rest of us. Our little mayfly existence would be laughable. Sad, but sad like a very special episode of a TV show is sad. Or else sad like the Holocaust, with all of the millions of deaths this one person would have outlived.
I’m not the same person I was 10 years ago. Think of the differences 100 years would make. Think of the cynicism, the endurance, and the lack of need to get it right with me because he has another chance somewhere down the line.
). I’d just have to tell him to knock it off when he complained about the prices of things nowadays…I don’t care if bread was 10 coppers a loaf when you were a kid, pony up the $2.50 and lets get out of the store! 
