The truth about the ‘gender care gap’: are men really more likely to abandon their ill wives?

Key Highlights

• “Sport was something we did a lot of and we did it together: we worked hard, played hard, we went for bike rides and went running and played golf together.”But around a year into their relationship, all that stopped abruptly when Jess was diagnosed with long Covid, the poorly understood syndrome that in some people follows a Covid infection.
• For her, it meant “a general shutdown of my body: lungs, heart, stomach, really bad brain fog”.
• She went from being a sporty, independent 29-year-old with a successful career to sleeping all day and relying on her boyfriend for everything.“I couldn’t leave the house, I couldn’t see my friends, so he became my emotional and physical support.
• I needed him to do everything around the house and bring me things when I couldn’t get out of bed, and he was also my social contact because I wasn’t seeing anyone else.
• It was an instant dynamic shift,” she says. Three years on, Jess has recovered enough to return to work part-time, though she still struggles with chronic fatigue and spends much of her free time resting.