One day I asked what someone’s relationship status was, and they said “I have a girlfriend but she’s been missing and is presumed dead, so I don’t know if getting another GF would be cheating”. It’s at that moment when I realized how complicated relationship statuses can get. Like that Seinfeld episode where the guy is in a coma so he lends his girlfriend to another guy.
One of my distant relatives met her college sweetheart and married him. At the wedding the groom’s father fell for and later married the bride’s mother as both had deceased partners. Several generations later that branch of the family tree is a knot.
More like a ladder.