All Comments on 'In Sickness And In Health'

but well written nonetheless - thanks for your time and talent

and when you cant, don't sell out. TK U MLJ LV NV

I don't think you could have ended it any other way that would have captured the same emotional pain and grief that you had been building up to throughout the story. There was never going to be a happy ending, so why attempt a mediocre one? Nah, just go for the REALISTIC one. And I think that is exactly what you did.

One thing is clear. If you had goals for this story, I think you achieved them. This story works well on the gut wrenching visceral level. Hard to imagine a reader NOT being affected in some way, by this missive.

Thanks for your efforts. Thanks for contributing. Looking forward to the next.....

But it simply wasn't interesting or entertaining to read. UGH!

Great story about consequences.

J, congratulations. Once again you have written a superb story of cognitive realism. Dealing with the inner emotional turmoil that afflicts those unfairly cheated of their lives.

Leaving all f us a lot of important and current issues to consider. Not just for our own viewpoints but also how our decisions, acts and inaction effects everyone we know.

...but I did for this story. Great piece of work. And yes, the ending worked for me. Because if you have an aching, burning wound, and people keep coming along and tearing the scabs off, sometimes there's only one way you can see to end the pain.

The fact that it does happen doesn't make it any less tragic. And don't worry about it feeling dark: as music composers will tell you, minor keys can be richer than major.

an interesting storyline. Thanks.

Thanks for sharing.

Well done. I hated almost every word. But someone had to write it, didn't they?

That story hurts. I'm going to carry it with me for a while, I suspect. It seems a lot like reality. BTW, five stars.

your story is too real. Sad, but on task. Great writing. Thanks for sharing......

There is hope for HIV infected persons and their partners it's called Truvada

Look it up. It reduces risk of transmission markedly

Actually it's more of psychological like phobia, she even refused to kiss even it could not transmit by kissing. After effective treatment lowering the viral load, infectious rate exceeding low and if condom added and use smartly, practically safe.

Even prior to effective treatment era, infectious rate was 0.4 per cent for unprotected vaginal coitus or needle stick injury from positive individuals. that's why fighting transmission is so rare.

I would say she's just phobic or she's just didn't love him enough.

Get a circumcision. It is a start.

But that doesn't really fix what ailed the relationship.

While it is tempting, I will not pile drive on the mother. This was not what she signed up for...though the same can be said for any spouse of someone suddenly disabled.. Add to that her perfectly valid fears of how likely his infection story was bullshit and...well.

Just a big pus filled bag of sad.

I wept.

Five stars.

I witnessed a similar reaction from my two half siblings to our father when he was dying from cancer. Both lived within 2 hours of him but wouldn't help him in anyway. I lived 12-1/2 hrs from him at the time and quit my job to move and help him the last 4 months of his life. My sister wouldn't visit because she didn't want to see him when he wasn't healthy and my brother showed up two days before he died to borrow money and left without giving him a handshake knowing he would be gone within a week.

Sorry for the rant.

How do you rate a tale like this? It's so heartbreaking it takes your breath away. What a shame that a selfish woman destroyed her whole family. It's also a shame John chose to live his life alone and lonely.

It was indeed a very dark tale...but it was told with such feeling and seemingly clinical accuracy about the dreaded disease. It was truly an eye opening story told with great empathy for those poor souls who are stricken with this HIV curse.

May I once again say thank you for such a truly moving story. You are now a class above the rest!

That was just, excellent writing.

Truely.

I long for a sequel about the wife, a little pain, some remorse, some more pain.

So if he had cancer and had erectile dysfunction she would have done the same?

nice.

Congrats. Wow. Just wow. This is a brilliant, powerful and sad tragedy. Five out of five. I read the warning about this being dark, but it really went places I didn't expect. Naturally I was reading expecting something sexy and clever since Jezzaz was the author. But this was something totally different. I enjoyed this story very much, despite not really being in the right mood for it at the start. It contains great writing.

I only finished reading it a few minutes ago and have not deeply reflected on it yet, but I don't see any obvious plot holes. I can very easily see two people reacting like this to this situation. The wife's behaviour is actually worse than cheating, if that is possible. It was almost emotional murder.

The daughters' reactions are understandable to a degree because of their age. Their father admits he over reacted to their juvenile rejection and he could have sought out a reconciliation with them. But it is clear the author wanted us to think he was too emotionally damaged to do that.

I always try for a constructive criticism and there were a couple of places where the descriptor of the main character's demeanor changed too quickly for me. ie. from calm to out of control. But honestly that is really nit picking.

There could have been a happy ending here. He could have reconciled with his daughters (although not the ex-wife and be belieavable.) But then it would not have been as powerful.

Thank you for writing and posting this. But please not to many of these without something clever and sexy in between. My poor old heart can't take it. Cheers Steve

Pile of mindless and talentless garbage ! Is this writer taking its meds ?

It has to be a great story. So I gave you a 5

It's still 1* until you learn how to write.

A vivid reminder of the tragic and undeserved consequences fate deals out to some

people.

Thanks for your effort!

5*****

I have read this before, and this time, it affected me just the same. You wrote a deep dark tale, a horrible tale with misery and heartbreak. A man who was abandoned by his wife and children. But after the abandonment, was pursued by those who blamed him for his misery. He ended up seeking the only solution, death.

who think Jezzaz illiterate? This writer has subtle discrimination and takes big chances, here risking a wallow in self-pity (the narrator's, not Jezzaz's) to reach into depths of feeling about predicaments too painful to contemplate except that the reader is sustained by the rectitude and deliberation of the literary style. I marvel that some readers miss the point. He -- she? -- took a big chance here, and brought it off!

Well written. Very dark but life is not always unicorns an rainbows. 5*

.... ur stories are just great. specially this one, it had a feel of O'Henry to it, but more importantly it seemed to be based in reality, why because some parts made less sense,

let me explain, difference between fiction & reality, Fiction always makes sense.

in a fictional story the wife would have amicably separated if she could not deal with it, or done what she did here, but why she had to disregard him makes no sense, well it does in a way, yet still she could have done the right thing & left him with a divorce, though it would have still hurt John, but not let him feel betrayed so completely.

But she wanted HIM to push her away, not to reveal her true intent to the people around.

i wish at this moment i was gay so i could hug john, & tell him that "i cant pretend to understand his pain, but i can empathize with his feeling of loss. & he has a friend who will care for him."

i dont think he would take it easily if a straight guy said it, he would need to see it as a genuine gesture not pity.

Call it what you may, adultery, cheating, fuckery, it happened to man. a man who gave up his very being for the happiness of others.

sometimes i wonder if god cries? is god ashamed of how we treat each other? i know i am.. but i hope i am not the only one.

JIM BOB102

This should be considered as a minor masterpiece. Thanks for your efforts.

There was no registration connected to the gun? No one asked questions in Town? This was just a rant. With some serious mis-information. Can't believe I wasted my time.

For myself I think the story would of ended better with his body being ID and the family knowing he blew his brains out on a mountain. They you took everything from him including his reasons to live.

Well written and very sad tale. Wife was either stupid or evil or some of each.

Very moving story, very well written, very sad ending, but appropriate. Thank you very much for your efforts.

But he needed to stop wallowing in self pity and blaming his 15yo (at the time) daughter for uninformed comments of youth.

Many people who have HIV lead full and meaningful lives albeit that cant have sex.

Rough story with some great underlying truth. Consequences.

For telboy17 - nice marketing rhetoric. Get that from a headline? Still, you're entitled to your opinion.

A thoughtful story about HIV. It's a sad story that is understandable from both sides. Very well written. As for the suicide.....well, he was living under a death sentence. I reckon his faithless daughter didn't help at all.

This story has a real life feel to it that bothers me. HIV is a fatal version of Leprosy, if you will. True, survival rates are much better nowadays, but still.....I can't blame his wife. Just a horrible situation.

Can't blame the wife? Why the hell not?

Excellent story - well written.

So much was unknown about AIDS when John S. contracted it. His wife was scared shitless and really didn't know what to do, though the two of them could of tried to do some research on the issue.

Think about HIV and AIDS. Essentially, people who contracted it in the past were doomed. I've seen it up close and personal. Have you ever dealt with a Chinese woman? They aren't like stupid white women. Not a lot of useless emotion. From her point of view, he was a dead man. Having sex with an HIV infected man? Seriously?

This was a very well written story. John was a sympathetic individual.....but he was infected. Plain fact. Confused people who don't understand that are mentally weak.

As for the suicide, that was appropriate. Each person should have the final say. As for me, Alzheimer's has killed most of the people on my Father's side of the family. I have a 75% chance. I'm 59 years old. That's just how I'm feeling about it.

As for the reaction of the children......they clearly were taking their cues from their mother. So, I'm not blaming the wife. As I've said, I've seen the disease up close and personal. I realize that transmission thru a blood exchange in a fight is a plot artifice, but in the real world, transmission is much nastier.

I remember when AIDS was first getting started. I saw a victim in Venice, Ca. He looked exactly like a concentration camp survivor. I worked for a Doctor who treated AIDS patients. So, I know both sides of the story. Frankly, John was lucky his wife kept talking to him.

CAN EXPECT ANY MORE FROM WHITE WOMEN IN THE USA.

"I didn't have a clue what I was doing or what I was saying or the impact it would have. I was just following Mom's lead." - I'm sorry, 15 is old enough to know better.

"It came out instantly and he regretted it." - He shouldn't regret it! She herself said that she deserved it.

"she wanted to take you guys – I guess to meet whomever it was she was nailing" - So, not supposed to be with the same guy twice, to AVOID emotional connections, and she's become so connected that she wants to introduce their DAUGHTERS to him?!

"we figured she had no reason to lie" - She had EVERY reason to lie! To make herself look good!

Okay, given the circumstances, I would have preferred that the girls somehow regained a relationship with their father and became estranged from their mother.

Although it would have changed the story, they should have had an amicable divorce. She could have gone with anybody she wanted and he could have maintained a relationship with his daughters.

I WILL pile drive on the mother. If she couldn't abide by the rules that they BOTH agreed on, she should have given him an amicable divorce, instead of driving a wedge between him and the girls with her lies.

The wife IS the problem! She agreed to a set of rules, found that she couldn't abide by them, and instead of going to her husband and making a new arrangement, maybe even an amicable divorce, she cheated, and lied to their kids to alienate them from their father.

You say that the kids are taking their cues from their mother. That might excuse THEM, but just adds blame to the mother!

Dark with no hope what more could he have done? A well thought out and written tale. I found it refreshing to read a story so free of bad English and annoying errors. Well worth my giving 5***** jezzaz.

Very well written but oh, so sad.

And so sad, but then life is like that. You handled a difficult subject well, I feel for him and his daughters. The wife, well, life IS like that... it's called human frailty. She was put in invidious position as well.

Great tale and well told

I sometimes wonder that people still say vows when they marry each other. All these stories relate to women that break one or another of those vows. In sickness or in health, until death do us part, for better or worse, forsaking all others... Did the wife in this story keep any of them? Of course, with that said, one does understand how hard it would be to continue life with someone with HIV. Or even maybe someone coming back from war without arms, legs, or paralyzed, mentally impaired, etc. Like Kenny Rogers's song- "Ruby, don't take your love to town". We have to face it...those damn wedding vows can be awful damn hard to keep! OldMarineVet

he not only runs away, but plays the victim and feels sorry for himself, must be like looking in the mirror for betrayed, huecuck, and the throbbing legion of wannabe cuckies here

Not much of a plot, just a bunch of miserable things bunched together.

Not to mention the author not doing his research. If someone infected with hiv is taking their meds and the numbers are low, then the odds of infecting someone else in an accident might be as low as one in ten thousand, depending on context.

Instead of bit ching about his foreskin, he should have just gotten circumsized.

Or learned to both use condoms properly and choosing the right ones.

The protagonist felt like a caricature of hiv scaremongering. It made the story feel almost anachronistic.

As long as you're HIV positive it doesn't matter if there's a 1 in 10 chance or a 1 in 10,000 chance of infecting another person, there will always be that chance and Murphy's Law being what it is, well you get the picture. The only way to avoid any chance of infecting another person with it 100% of the time is abstinence. Nothing else will do.

powerful and painful to read. i feel bad fot the guy, and were this reality, would wish pain on the surviving family , self centered cunts. teens or not they knew right from wrong

I don’t mean the content, I mean the way the story was written. It was powerful, it was agonizing, it was sad, all at the same time. I don’t like “drama” just for drama’s sake but this story was dramatic in a real gut-wrenching way. In a word, it was outstanding.

Wanted his 'family' to KNOW that he took his own life. They truly deserved to carry that guilt.

Just stupid, he must use some pretty shitty condoms, as well as not realise something as simple as holding on to the condom and pulling out immediately after coming so the condom doesn't get bunched.

I guess it's true that Sex Ed is pretty terrible in the US

With decent condoms and proper technique, the risk of breakage is super low.

Even if a condom breaks, the risk of infection is actually pretty low if he also has low virals.

With the proper precautions there's less than one in a million chance of actually infecting someone when having sex with them.

None of that matters. If his wife is paranoid about it he can't change it. Like it's says: they tried a few times. But she's still afraid, and if you're afraid it probably isn't pleasurable. And if it's not pleasurable she's not going to want to do it.

Regardless, she's a bitch. One thing to have an "understanding", another thing to break that understanding. On top of which she leaves him taking the kids. AND lies to the kids and future husband.

There are plenty of "no sex" marriages in the world. If wife was afraid then that's what she had to accept. Bitch and cunt.

He, on the other hand, truly loved his family to the very end.

My fourth of fifth read. Still one of the best stories on Literotica.

I feel as though the readers who nitpicked "this and that" missed the opportunity to read a really great study in a person's heart.

Thank you for writing it and sharing it. It was not "entertaining" but, it was moving.

Condoms aren’t a 100% you fucking moron neither is the pill, neither is the Depo shot, people get pregnant on it all the time when condoms break wow! The story is stating the fact that the wife basically turn her back on him and it didn’t matter what anyone said, medical experts, marriage experts, it in a matter what anybody said. To she wanted to go fuck somebody else that’s all it came down. The sad part in the harsh truth is they let their mom make a decision them. The mom knew the truth she never tried to defend her husband, for one reason she probably never Believe the The way he was infected. She felt he was fucking around but when the truth came out. It she showed you that wasn’t anything but a slut and a whore. The kids may have only find the truth out when it was too late but still in their choices and they made a bed now they had to sleep in them alone. And the mom showed her true colors, wow it only took her three months to get over the fact that her kids found out that she was a slut.

I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes after reading this. It never fails to amaze me just how good some of the authors on this site, ostensibly a sex story site, are. I won’t comment on the accuracy of the story because, frankly, I have never studied up on HIV/AIDS, so I don’t know the nuances of the disease or any of the treatments. What I do know is that the author did a magnificent job of portraying the absolute despair in which Joe lived.

It’s a story I absolutely hated reading, but it was a 100 star story that I’m glad I read and I would hope everyone has a chance to read.

If the measure of a writer is how deeply their works affect readers, you're nonpareil.

Brutal.

To repeat what someone else stated... WOW!!!

-jaye-

I liked it. It was seriously hard core but very sad.

Just so well told. Just damn.

I'm a person who likes to read stories that make me feel good. I can't say that this story qualified, but It was so powerful in the way it was written that I couldn't dislike it. 5 stars!

title sums it up

Extremely Dark. Great read though...

Wow ! Scary good .emotional home run ! Well done.

We have burn the bitch stories all the time, burn the ungrateful kids is a new genre

Wow - a wonderful uplifting story - full of hope and positivity …….

I always enjoy reading this author’s ramblings.

Thank you very much

Soul crushing and sadly educational, thank you for a creative and well told story.

Five stars, even if "LOVE IT" is the last way I would describe my feelings after reading it...

A sad 5 stars ⭐️.

How realistic!

Bill

Well written, though dark and demented

So sad but so true. You did a wonderful job of telling such a sad story of a man’s end of life.

Reality sucks! Well told story, difficult to deal with, and that is probably its highest praise, because it is so believable.

There are some incredibly well written, but gut wrenching stories on this website. This is one. Candyman, from BigGuy33, is another. I remain in awe of some of these writers.

Oh Fuck!!!!

Heart touching

It's not the AIDS

it's betrayal by the family

That make him dead... Before Death

Dark. sad, heartbreaking, and very well written. 5*

Well, we were warned- it was dark, and it was sad. The MC got his revenge on his daughters, as their guilt will remain the rest of their lives. The wife- not so much, she needs to lose the friendship of her girls. Now for the criticism- it is entirely possible to be friends with someone and not have sex. Don't think the author ever considered that. And why cut himself off from his guy friends? Makes no sense. He's all alone and miserable, but it's his own doing.

A sad tale, well written and researched.

This is such a fantastic tale; I enjoy re-reading it every so often. Thank you.

WOW

I do not think this story is dark. It just about how others that are less well off in so many ways gets treated in this world. All the money in corporations goes back to greedy persons and those that need help never get the proper help or comfort they need. My distain for people that commit adultery is great, they are just selfish persons who only think of themselves and you know what its them that comes out smelling of roses when the wronged persons sometimes never recover from all that hurt. Perhaps selfish persons should read this storey, but then again they would be too selfish to know what type of person they are.

Sad… so sad. But very well written. Thanks

reread for me and truly a heart wrenching story. sort of feel if Grace had gone out to his cabin immediately and pleaded with him he might have stayed and Grace and Sophia could visit sometimes

😥😥😥😥😥😥😥

Great ending.

Those hoes don't deserve closure or happiness

Yep, that's dark. But Grace did try. Points for that.

WOW! just WOW!

Heartbreaking story.

Intense

WoW, powerful stuff.

Gut wrenching sad. Hope and love dashed to pieces by the heartless bitch he married.

Pretty powerful story

I have had friends who have died from AIDS, and other who dies as "John" did in this story, by suicide. I am not gay nor have I lived the lifestyle. Folks forget that in the 1980-1990s, there were for more ways than just gay sex to get AIDS, but many were unknown. This is a good telling of an example of the stigma in the day, and the absolute horrible way that so many were misunderstood and abused by ignorant family and friends.