My husband is 10 years older than me and the age difference is enough to put him in the vulnerable category.
Nonetheless he is very fit and healthy - taking a lot of exercise - and some tests he did revealed that he had the metabolism of a man 15 years younger than his actual age. He liked to boast about this
However, as soon as Covid-19 came along, he was (rightly) concerned. He dropped all the boasting about how young he was and declared his intention of putting himself into lockdown as soon as this was advised - this was about a week before the general lockdown. This was a declaration. It wasn't framed as, 'This is what I think I should do, despite my excellent health. How do you feel about the way it will impact on you and our liives togeher?''
For the first week I was working and also - like many people - dealing with trying to buy food for us both at a period of panic buying. Then we went into lockdown and supermarkets got more organised. However, I am now the one who has to deal with queuing up for groceries. It's as if I am the one who has to take all the risk of carrying out essential tasks, while he sit back and lets himself be looked after.
I should add that he's never smoked and has no underlying health conditions. It is simply his age and sex which puts him at risk. My own health background is that I had a severe viral illness when I was younger and can still get very hard hit by viral infections. So though I'm younger and less at risk because of being female, my health history is probably worse than his.
It's a small thing that has broken the camel's back. Normally, if my husband was cooking - we take this pretty much by turns now that I'm not working - he would either go out and buy what he needed freshly or get something out of the freezer first thing. We are now planning what to cook for some days in advance, I'm buying everything and freezing the meat and fish. (He likes to cook with meat, chicken etc - I tend to cook more vegetarian stuff.)
What has been happening though, is that when it's his turn to cook he forgets to defrost the ingredients he need. And I really don't want that additional task of reminding him on top of the responsibility of shopping. So a few days back there was a lot of panicky defrosting of minced beef and frozen sauce in the microwave, by late afternoon. This morning again, I realised he'd not remembered to get pork out of the freezer, and I decided to prompt him - not wanting to deal with the possible problems of hasty defrosting. 'Isn't there something you've forgotten? Something domestic?' The same thing that you forgot to do on Wednesday and then had to deal with in a hurry?'
He really didn't get it, so in the end I told him.
But I'm not going to remind him again. Next time if he forgets it'll have to be beans on toast. If we have enough bread. Or beans.
There are limits to how much looking after I am prepared to do.