I’m not sure I can forgive

[ThisYearUnderTheMistletoe]

I’m clinically vulnerable and my condition can easily get worse from a virus.
A ‘simple’ cold can take me a few weeks to recover from.
The flu or covid means a definite step back, a worsening of my condition for months and months. I got covid 18~24 months ago and still haven’t been back to my baseline. Not sure if I ever will.

DH is healthy. A bad cold for him means a day being under the weather, taking one paracetamol 😱😱 and going for a run to get better. In 25 years, Ive never seen him spend the day in bed due to an illness/fever.

A few weeks ago, he got a ‘virus’ but ‘didn’t think’ to tell me. In his own words, it was a ‘bad cold’. Instead, he proposed an outing for the day, involving a few hours in the car.
Sure enough, I caught his ‘bad cold’. He recovered in 2 days. I’m in bed too weak to get down the stairs.

im not sure I can get past the fact he put my health in danger in that way after seeing the impact catching a virus has on me.

But why is her responsibility to notice and act before he does or says anything?

It's his body, he knows first and before anyone else what's going on with it - and he also knows OP is vulnerable.

So when he feels symptoms, surely it's his responsibility to speak up, not hers to spot his symptoms.

Personally?

Because "a bad cold" by very definition involves symptoms. Unless op is also deaf and blind she could take personal responsibility and not get in a car with someone whose nose is red and streaming, with watery eyes, who is coughing and sneezing.

If op actually means that he had no symptoms but felt a bit achy or tired then I think it's pretty unreasonable for her to expect him to mention something that could equally just be tiredness after two weeks working away, and she is trying to blame someone for nature and viruses. That's life, not a deliberate plan to make someone ill

How do you notice a headache and a sore throat unless someone tells you?

As I said, DH doesn’t stop. I actually asked him if he was ok in the morning as I thought he was looking tired. He said Yes 🤔🤔
I just assumed the two weeks business trip had taken its toll.

I didn’t assume I couldn’t trust him and planned for the worst.

@category12

Ultimately her health is her responsibility - her DH should give a heads up if he knows he's unwell, however you're still contagious before you show symptoms of most virus / cold / flu / covid type bugs - he wouldn't have known for Friday or Saturday he was ill (pre symptom) but he would have been contagious. There's zero he can do about that tbh.

Yep.

For me it’s like
you know you can have cold sores. You can feel one coming even though nothing is visible yet. You don’t go missing a newborn baby.

Its that simple.

@justalittlesnoel youre mixing avoiding all risks with him making basic steps to protect me.

I know people who are clinically vulnerable like me who expect ther DH to wear a mask always (outside the house). To never go to a restaurant. To never meet up inside with people unless masked.
Im not asking that (even though wearing a mask in a long haul flight from the USA would have been nice).

Im asking to be decent enough to tell me if he is feeling unwell.

How do you not give someone a cold? Colds are highly contagious and I assume you live together. How would he normally prevent you from catching bugs?

But like I said - he's contagious before symptoms show - so you might have caught it in the Friday / Saturday when zero symptoms were shown vs in the car ride when he had a achy feeling. He can't know before he's ill that he's sick, you were already exposed before he got a sniffle.

Colds are airborne.

You protect yourself the same way than you protect yourself from covid. Ventilation, opening windows, HEPA filters, not staying the same room than someone who has a cold Wo a mask on.

Not perfect but certainly better than creating the best conditions for said virus/cold/covid to spread.

There's lots of things you can do to try to reduce transmission - none of which are perfect - but at least it gives the vulnerable person more of a chance of avoiding it and they also then know the risk they're taking.

So they can choose whether to kiss the person, or mask up, or isolate themselves in their room, or whatever they think is reasonable.

It's not giving OP the heads-up and the option to make an informed decision about her own risk, that's problematic.

@ThisYearUnderTheMistletoe Did he know he had a cold when he suggested the day out/journey in the car?

There seems to be some disagreement on the thread about whether you should have noticed, but the fact is, you didn't notice. Presumably, because his symptoms were not yet externally detectable. If that's the case, can you clear up the confusion; did he know he was infected when he got in the car with you?

No one is saying it’s not. Calm down, it’s not a bun fight. Roll yer sleeves back down. 😂 what’s being said is it is both their responsibility

He will have been contagious a few days before the symptoms started - and that means he was already shedding virus when he got home on the Friday (and he had no way to know that until the symptoms started).

In short, as you live together, by the time he was showing symptoms you had already been exposed. And that's not his fault.

I get why you want to blame him, you must feel miserable, but unless you permanently isolate from everyone - including him - this is always going to be a risk.

Isolating after symptoms start to show is a bit "shut the door after the horse has bolted" when you share a bed/are close with someone.

So he now admits he had a headache and a sore throat and lied, but at that point he didn’t have a cold? Never mind a bad one?

@Janeandme

How is OP supposed to action her responsibility, here? Obviously, if he visibly seems ill, then she can keep a distance from him, but what's your advice to her if he's feeling like he's coming down with something, and chooses not to say?

That’s what I literally just asked, he clearly must have lied to her.

@Janeandme

OP has said Im asking to be decent enough to tell me if he is feeling unwell

So, she's upset that he hasn't been decent enough to tell her that he was feeling unwell. Which bit aren't you understanding?

A headache is not a bad cold, is it.

A bad cold, any cold, includes sneezing, runny nose, maybe a cough as well.

He was starting to come down with the early symptoms of what turned out to be a cold but could just have been tiredness after a two week work trip.

What do you want from him with this language of betrayal and lost trust?

Viruses are not things you blame people for having. I do blame covid messaging for this concept though.

It sounds understandably frustrating but unfortunately it wouldn’t be feasible for you and others to live life as if you’re preparing for an imminent bone marrow transplant. Sorry you’re not feeling well. It can be really difficult conveying what it’s actually like living with a chronic health issue and healthier people often find it difficult to understand.

Actually they, like other similar viruses, spread from several days before symptoms start so all your measures are unfortunately ones you need to take all the time rather than relying on people correctly identifying a headache as the onset of what turns out to be 'a bad cold'.

As I said before, sadly perhaps you are at a stage of needing to not share living space, or only when masked, with people who work or travel outside the home.

Except he describes what he had as a bad cold, while for OP it has been more serious. We don't know if was the common cold or a different virus with some overlapping symptoms and neither do they. Many people describe their experience of having the current version of Covid as a bit of a cold/bad cold, while others have a much harder time with it.

I don't think it's unreasonable, when you have a very vulnerable partner, to be expected to say "oh I'm feeling a bit under the weather, headache, sore throat" rather than merely thinking "oh I'll push through" and leaving them unaware.

This thread is fascinating. Probably in true MN style where people are simply answering what they want to answer, don’t read posts etc….

Just for clarification,

• I NEVER said I blame him for having a virus. I’m unhappy he didn’t say he was unwell when he knew he was
• What virus it was doesn’t matter. He had what HE calls a bad cold. Because that’s his experience of a bad cold. It’s not everyone else experience but there isn’t a lot I can do about that. That’s how it felt TO HIM, which is even more reason to actually tell me about It?

Yes except it's not Schrödinger's cold is it ... both simultaneously a bad cold and a cold with no visible outward signs

As I said before, sadly perhaps you are at a stage of needing to not share living space, or only when masked, with people who work or travel outside the home.

You do realise how ableist that comment is, right?

No it’s different people reacting differently to the same virus.

Just like people can be asymptomatic with covid and others end up in ICU. And it’s still the same virus.