I blow hot and cold on the correct tenses for the following sentence.
I wonder, in which part of the sentence should I go with the Past Perfect, and in which part should I opt for the Simple Past? Quite tricky.
(1) “I understand your wanting to give it all up. But wouldn’t you hate it if it turned out that the business would have turned around if you had only stuck it out a bit longer?”
(2) “I understand your wanting to give it all up. But wouldn’t you hate it if it had turned out that the business would have turned around if you had only stuck it out a bit longer?”
(3) “I understand your wanting to give it all up. But wouldn’t you hate it if the business turned around if you only stuck it out a bit longer?”
(4) “I understand your wanting to give it all up. But wouldn’t you hate it if the business turned around if you had only stuck it out a bit longer?”
(5) “I understand your wanting to give it all up. But wouldn’t you hate it if the business had turned around if you had only stuck it out a bit longer?”
I understand your wanting to give it up; but wouldn’t you hate it if the business turned around because someone else stuck it out a bit longer?
I’m not really sure what you are going for here. You are posing an impossibility. There’s no way to know what would happen if he didn’t quit, assuming that he does quit. You are mixing a conditional, which is a future concept (“if”) with a past tense, and that doesn’t make sense. I think that’s why you can’t get a sentence that sounds right.
Anyway, generally, as far as using the pluperfect, it’s redundant to use it more than once. “I would have gone if she would have gone,” is wrong. “I would have gone if she had gone,” is better.
Your options don’t really make sense so, rather than judging those conditionals on their grammar, here’s an alternative: “I understand your wanting to give it all up, but if you do that you’ll never know whether you could’ve made it a success.”
I wonder if I should have simplified things and said something like:
(REVISION) “I understand your wanting to give it all up, but the business could turn around if you only stick it out a bit longer. Wouldn’t you hate it if putting in a little more effort could have made all the difference?”
