Thank you for expressing this so eloquently! I think many ppl are so quick to pass judgement without thinking how tough it is to be terminally ill and how taxing it is to the family.
Also, my condolences; it's never easy to lose someone you care for to cancer. And I hope life is gets easier for you and your partner.
A lot of the people who read here haven’t had enough life experience yet. I also would’ve done the exact same thing as him. Although I think his choices would’ve been different if he knew she was pregnant. If he knew about haebom he probably would stayed and then he would’ve lived with the guilt of putting her through his illness(and most likely his death if he stayed in Korea) and raising a child. It probably would’ve killed her to watch him completely lose his memory of her and then ultimately watch him die. That’s a crazy thing to ask of someone you love.
Thank you for saying this. Hugs to you and to everyone who can relate to this
I said this as a response to someone else but honestly I want it to be a comment on its own after seeing the comments section:
He abandoned her thinking it was going to save her from having to waste months of her life as a caretaker and then years of her life grieving as a widow while also unaware that she was pregnant. Not the right choice, sure, but also made thinking it was for her own good. He was willing to live as a villain thinking that she would move on faster and easier if she thought her partner was a scumbag than if she clung to him until his dying breaths, which would more likely leave a permanent scar. I've had family members die of cancer and the months leading up to their deaths left everyone so haggard and their funerals + months of hospitalizion was a huge financial toll. No one would ever regret it, but it's so difficult to get through. I've heard of plenty of people who try to hide their terminal diagnosis from their loved ones because the thought of forcing them to pause their lives to take care of them or staying in their memories as a shell of who they were is so painful they would rather die alone. It's an extremely difficult situation and to say that he doesn't deserve to be part of a healthy family or that he was being insanely selfish so fuck him is..a lot. I hope all of you who are so quick to point fingers have more empathy for real life people.
As someone who developed a chronic illness with a spouse who had to drop out of college to work hard to keep us afloat and then work hard after work to basically be my caretaker, I live in so much guilt that I'm taking away the best years of his life and I worry constantly that one day it'll all be too much. I often think that maybe it would have been better for him if we had never met. It's an awful position to be in and I would never wish it on anyone, I can't even imagine a terminal illness where you have to worry about your mind falling apart on top of your body failing you. God forbid any of you ever have to be in that position.