From The Book of Questions by Gregory Stock.

Question #19: You have the chance to meet someone with whom you can have the most satisfying love imaginable - the stuff of dreams. Sadly, you know that in six months the person will die. Knowing the pain that would follow, would you still want to meet the person and fall in love? What if you knew your lover would not die, but instead betray you?

Okay, first one? Die? Heck, yes. Short term relationships are a lot easier to maintain to begin with, anyhow.

<- cynical


But betray? Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Different matter entirely. Betray means there is someone else involved yet again, and I don't want to deal with that. Now, if you'd said something like, "they'll fall out of love with you and leave you and you'll never see them again" that'd be different again, because then it's not adding in some third person.
I might or might not do that one. I'm seriously sitting here staring at a coin, thinking about flipping it. That on the line.
But betray?
Absolutely not.

I'd want it to last, thank you.

So no, I'd rather have a long harsh reality peppered with moments of true hope than a dreamlike short sequence of events.

I don't think I would do it. 6 months isn't very long, and I'd probably end up being unhappy for longer than 6 months after their death. And, for the betrayal one, if they betrayed me, then things must not have been as good as I thought, so why bother if the whole thing is basically a lie?

I don't think I would do it. Even when we would be together the fact that I'm going to loose him in a short amount of time would haunt my sleep, so I probably wouldn't be able to handle it

y'all are optimists, how wonderful

Me, I'm constantly looking at everyone around me and figuring I'm going to lose them soon, anyhow. I just don't have faith at all in long-term; people are always dying. (It's true people in my family can live a long time, but.... accidents happen to everyone.)

I don't know about the first question... but the second, definitely not. Any positive memories would just be poisoned by the betrayal...

Hmmm.
I might prefer it is a betrayal than that the person dies, because I would truly love them.
It would hit me harder if they die and haunt me deeply for the rest of my life, while if they betray me, I can still know they are alive and well.

I'm also a very forgiving person, so it would be easy for me to forgive them anyway.

I guess here is my hierarchy of bad things to happen in a relationship.

1. Death
2. They stop loving me.
3. Betrayal

I wonder if how people answer this question is affected a lot by how people view death and what follows, or if anything follows.