Dating Site For The Terminally Ill, “Til Death Do Us Part.com”

A free dating site for terminally ill people launched this past Valentine’s Day, sparking questions about what is truly essential in a relationship- does having a known expiration date mean you’re undateable by anyone who’s not in the same boat?

One thing’s for sure, the marketing director should be shot for allowing a tagline like “Join us as we launch Till-Death-Do-Us-Part.com, if you are truly dying to connect.” We mean…really?

The website has only 26 members so far, so it’s hard to gauge if it’ll prove to be a success in the coming weeks, but its very existence raises some sensitive questions. In one of the scenes from the move Fight Club, a terminally ill woman named Chloe gets up to speak at her support group. She nervously admits how lonely and horny she is and then starts to list the sex aids she has in her apartment before being rushed off stage by the moderator. Is that what it’s really like for terminally ill people? Shouldn’t they be allowed to express their sexuality as fully as any other person?

Till-Death-Do-Us-Part.com handles at least that part of the question successfully, since the answer is a resounding “yes” in their book. It’s less than pleasant to think that people would let someone’s illness stand in the way of love but it’s also just realistic to realize that sickness and dying scare the crap out of all of us. One of the biggest love myths is that love is going to last forever, and maybe facing the reality of the loss of love, not to mention the inevitable loss of our own health and life, is too intimidating for most people to confront directly. In light of those conditions, maybe a dating site for people who are all too aware of the limitations of mortality does make sense. And to the site creator’s credit, there’s no romanticization of dating amongst the terminally ill- “horndogs” and romance-seekers are equally welcome.

What do you think- is this morbid and marginalizing or just an enlightened and realistic approach to dating under extraordinary circumstances?

Dating service for terminally ill people [Boing Boing]

Till Death Do Us Part