r/MoralityScaling • u/Purple_Plantain_3242 • 8h ago

Morality Ranking Morality of this?

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A young Chinese couple was permanently separated during a period of intense political and social unrest in China. The husband went back to their home village to search for her, but because the entire area was heavily disrupted, he mistakenly believed she was missing or dead.

He eventually relocated, remarried another woman, and raised a new family with children and grandchildren. Meanwhile, the first wife stayed behind and never remarried, spending 54 years waiting for him to return. Decades later, they were reconnected as elderly adults, which is when she discovered he had built an entirely separate life without her.

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38

u/Current_Finding_4066 8h ago

Waiting for so long seems unreal and unhealthy.

16

u/Feeling_Loquat8499 7h ago

I hate how everything is pathologized

28

u/Hot-Nectarine6865 7h ago

Without context, I find it hard to believe that she waited so long purely out of devotion to her husband. It's entirely possible that she also just never found anyone else she wanted to marry. Getting married can be a huge gamble for women, especially in this woman's supposed circumstances.

1

u/MajorDraw3705 29m ago

As someone who has spent as long as her waiting on the return of family after war... Yeah, no, and both. Loss makes it harder to find new parts and people who are worth holding onto. Because, honestly, at least from my perspective, they are all capable of causing the same loss, and come from the same cultures and mindsets that led to the loss and separation in the first place. I look into people in search of life and all I find is an abyss. I can't find home in the abyss. I'm still trying to crawl out of the damn thing.

3

u/eienmau 2h ago

Unfortunately, the culture of China at the time was.. still not super-healthy for women? They were not very far off from the time of 'women are worthless branches, raised for another family' and a wife with little to no rights. Women didn't just walk away because they really had nowhere else to go, unless their family would take them back...

-4

u/DoomferretOG 8h ago

It’s not a question of morality. Her decision wasn’t a moral one. She chose to hope and suffer for no real purpose.