This is inspired by a dream I just woke up from (that, oddly enough, involved Regis Philbin, but that’s not important right now)…however, I’m sure this concept has come up before in movies and what not.
While working with a small group of people in an isolated location, your spouse is infected by a disease which will cause death in a matter of months. You will be able to communicate with your spouse freely until the end, but you can’t physically visit without being exposed yourself. By the way, let’s assume for the sake of argument that you don’t have any children.
**1) Despite certain death for you, would you choose to join your spouse anyway so that you could die together?
If the rolls were reversed, would you ask your spouse to join you, or would you prefer they stayed away to live a longer, normal life after you’re gone?**
Oh, and in case you’re curious, Regis surprised his wife and, against her wishes, showed up at her space colony despite knowing he would die. That’s how much he wanted to be with her. What a guy!
1)Probably; I think I would consider it unbearably cruel to shut myself away from a dying spouse.
2)Certainly not; I would strenuously urge, nay, command my spouse to stay away from me if I was dying of an infectious disease.
I’m aware of the apparent contradiction, however, I don’t believe I should make a decision regarding someone else’s life vs my comfort; I should be able to make the decision regarding someone else’s comfort vs my own life.
If it matters, by the way, I should reiterate that your spouse has coworkers who have also been infected, and thus would not die alone whether or not you were there.
It would depend on the state of my marriage/other family to be completely honest - if I was in love with my spouse and had no other family, I would go without hesitation. If my marriage was not doing well, and my parents/brother/family were around, then I would probably not, but support my spouse through communication. (While doing my damn utmost to find a cure).
I would never ever ever ask my spouse to join me. Asking my SO to commit suicide so I don’t have to die alone is beyond selfish. I don’t know if I would even tell them if I was dying, because if they were like me and we were in love they would come anyway…
There’s a interesting point - would you tell your spouse that you were dying if you knew they would sacrifice themselves to be with you in your hour of need?
Wow…good question. I’m not sure that would work, practically speaking, though.
My wife and I are very close, and I’m certain that if I knew I was dying but trying to hide it, I’d inadvertently end up communicating with her every free moment I had. She’d suspect something was wrong pretty quickly. And I also know that if I were the non-infected spouse, I would be horrified to learn that the love of my life didn’t give me a chance to make that decision for myself and, at the very least, give me the opportunity to spend more quality time with her before she died. It’s a noble sacrifice, but a hard position to leave a loved-one in.
I like to think that in such circumstances, I would have the strength of will to end my own life, making her selfless sacrifice unnecessary and/or impossible. In reality though, it might be different.
No way. I think that no matter how much I loved someone, I wouln’t needlessly sacrifice my own life. I’d obviously do everything else I could - communicate and be there as much as possible, do everything in my power to make their final months as pleasant as possible - but I’m not going to visit unless there’s a bubble.
Again, no way. Why would I want my partner to effectively kill themselves just because I’m dying? This makes not a lick of sense to me.
:dubious: Why? It’s not like it’s going to be an awful long wait for the Reaper. You may as well say your goodbye’s. And it’s not like the doctors are going to let her in anyway.
Personally, I think it’s silly. I may like my wife, but I’m not dying just because she is. I have responsibilities to others, and killing yourself over grief is simultaneously stupid and depraved. Neither am I arrogant enough to demand she follow me into death.
Seriously, without turning this into a Pit thread, use your heads, people. Life and death are not dramatic television episodes. Some people die before their time. You don’t mope and suicide over it; you accept it, move on (without forgetting them), and try to live well and goodly.
If I thought there was a reasonable possibility that she would somehow overcome the safety precautions, I (think I) would take steps (to wit: suicide) to make that impossible, is all I was saying.
I don’t think this part of the scenario need necessarily be considered a case of killing yourself over grief, but rather, rendering necessary assistance and comfort at the incidental cost of your own life.
It sounds like you might be mixing some of the issues up together here; let me succinctly restate my personal case:
I would render assistance to my spouse, even at the cost of my own life
If the tables were turned, I would take stringent measures to prevent her losing her life to assist me. Those stringent measures may entail prematurely putting an end to myself.
-I (think I) would not mope and kill myself merely because someone near to me was dying.