Will you love him/her if he/she gets AIDS?

Did he tell her before they became intimate?

If I loved someone, I'd still love them if they got sick - or if they were sick and told me about it. I'd be upset if they'd kept such important information a secret because they were afraid I wouldn't love them anymore because they were sick.

Having said that, I don't know how I'd relate sexually to someone who was infected with AIDS. I'd have to talk to doctors and become very informed about whether/how that's possible without definitely impacting my own health.

But I wouldn't dump the person because I'd still love them. I don't know - it's difficult.

I have a friend who had bowel cancer and had to have a colostomy. He dumped his girlfriend (he told me) because he didn't think it was fair of him to ask her to stay and have sex with someone who had had a colostomy. She knew he had become sick with cancer - but he ended it when he found out about having to have the colostomy instead of putting her in the position of having to be with someone who had that problem.
This was five years ago. He STILL loves her. And she still has no idea why he dumped her (she's with someone else).
Sad, isn't it?

Sad and magnificent.

I suppose there is a degree of "it depends" if the infection came about due to an affair (either heterosexual or homosexual), or due to drug use (in particular if the infected person was allegedly in recovery but it turned out that they were lying about that).* In your fact pattern, it's due to a blood transfusion. Good God, I'd hope no one would dump me if I got sick due to a blood transfusion. I mean, people do, on occasion, get hepatitis from transfusions, even now, in 2009. If my husband said good-bye if I got hepatitis, we'd all be appalled and consider him crass and nuts. Why is it so different if the transfusion imparted HIV to me?

*Note: in the two scenarios I gave above, I think the issue is less the disease than it is the betrayal, yes?

PS I would still love him. I hope and believe he would still love me. Love is a feeling that is hard to turn off (although you can think less about a person, over time; that's called getting over someone). I would not turn off those feelings if he became ill. Hell, we are all going to get old. Eventually, it is highly likely that one or both of us will sicken, and probably in some sort of horrible way (Alzheimer's, cancer, heart disease, etc.) before death. I won't bail when that happens.

He is magnificent. Now he spends his energy and time raising money for cancer research and awareness. He's turned his back garden into the most beautiful oasis to which he admits visitors for donations to cancer research (he calls it John's Secret Garden). He's a builder by profession so he does things like buy old doll houses from charity shops to refurbish them and give them to the pediatric oncology wing of area hospitals and every weekend he goes on long, long bike rides on canal paths around England - to expend energy and think.

He's a hero. And he thought that someone would leave someone like him because he was no longer 'whole'.
I can see his point, but I wish he had told her and given her the chance to show him what she either is or isn't.