The second one I knew the person would be angry, but I thought it was important. Her mother died of cancer at a young age (the daughter was about 30 at the time) and she was declaring that since her father loved her mother so much, he would be alone and never remarry. I asked her to describe how much he loved her, which she gladly did. Convinced it was true, I felt the need to warn her that truly happily married people who get widowed usually remarry quickly, because they have such good associations with marriage. She was furious at me, and threw me out of her apartment. three months later I picked up the phone an she was sobbing… her father was engaged to an old friend of both her parents. "I could never have dealt with this if you hadn't told me that then," she said, "if you had waited until now, I wouldn't have believed you. Saying that was one of the most generous things anyone ever did for me."

That didn't stop her from trying to get revenge on me later, though. I think she blamed me for her father remarrying, even though I never met her dad and only met her stepmother many years later.

People are funny.