My husband is not a put-on-your-own-life-vest kind of guy, to his extreme detriment. He loves to do favors, drop off dinners, buy unexpected gifts, and go the extra mile at work. He’s constantly being praised by friends and colleagues, but at home, he’s regularly exhausted, sick or in pain, and overwhelmed. I tell him, often, that he’s got to cut back for his own health, but at this point, I fear he’s tuning me out.
However, since COVID I can’t abide by how he’s handling himself anymore. We have been lucky and only gotten COVID once in the past few years, but I had to actually yell at him to keep him from leaving the house and going to work on a day he was literally sweating with a fever, but still testing negative on a rapid. (He tested positive the next day.) We’ve stayed mostly healthy since then, but he’s gone right back to his old ways. Worse, he insists on having people over for visits even if he’s feeling sick, and gets angry at me if I insist on letting them know that someone isn’t feeling well. He says that cooking for his friends or hosting get-togethers is the only thing that gives him stress relief, and when I intervene I’m just making him feel worse, not better. I’m at a loss for what to do.
—Super Spreaders