As the COVID-19 omicron variant starts to spread across the country, including a “significant number” of the over 1,200 cases that forced Cornell University to close, people are rightfully starting to re-examine their Christmas plans. You wouldn’t want to expose anyone, right?
Well, that's not exactly the case for one couple. In fact, one spouse wrote a letter to Salon's Pandemic Problems advice column, accusing her husband of purposefully exposing their family to COVID against their wishes — and people have BIG feelings about it.
In the Letter Writer’s own words, her husband is “unvaccinated and conspiracy-theory minded with anger against authority issues.”
While the LW is “double-vaccinated” and is just hoping he didn’t expose their 7-year-old and 15-month-old who aren't vaccinated yet.
The story went like this: Last Friday the LW’s husband found out that his friend’s wife tested positive for COVID. "On Saturday, he decided to drive two hours to spend the weekend overnight at their place,” the LW wrote.
He swore that that he wasn't "planning" to catch COVID — he just "refuses to live his life in fear.”
By Monday, he was already showing symptoms and on Tuesday, the LW “insisted” he get tested. Of course, “he tested positive for Delta,” the LW wrote.
The LW wants to be responsible, they kept their children home from school and child care and is planning on getting everyone tested. They’ll keep their kids in quarantine for 17 days and then test them again before allowing them to return to school.
If it sounds like a lot of work — it is. The LW was handling this whole fiasco by herself.
“I'll have to do home-schooling and cope with the fallout from his decision entirely on my own, including missing work,” the LW explained, before saying she felt “devastated, betrayed, and furious.”
The LW went on to write, “I feel like he absolutely knew what he was doing, understood potential consequences — not just for his own health but for his family — and decided that neither me or my kids had any right or say in his choice to do this."
And no matter how much the husband says he didn’t plan on getting sick — it seems like that’s the only answer for his actions.
“I don't see many other ways of interpreting this, outside of sheer stupid recklessness and the belief that consequences apply to everyone except him,” the LW wrote.
LW hasn’t “blown up” at the husband yet “or said anything in anger beyond expressing — sadly and with a huge amount of fatigue — that I didn't understand how he could do this.”
Instead, LW has taken care of him, making him soup, picking up medicine and masks, and letting him rest.
But that doesn’t mean the LW isn't angry.
“I'm letting him rest and trying to manage the rest because I simply don't know what to do. I'm numb,” the LW wrote.
“Now he wants to go spend a week over Christmas with the very same couple that infected him in the first place,” the LW continued.
“He says if I refuse to go, he will take both kids and go anyway,” the LW added.
The LW felt helpless and had zero trust that her husband would do the right thing.
“I have no family in the country and I would not want to potentially expose them or anyone else, even if I did,” she added.
“Sincerely,
Numb on my Next Move.”
People online were equally horrified.
"This is seriously grounds for divorce," wrote one person in the comments section of a Reddit post where the article was shared. "I don’t like to throw that in right away but this persons spouse complete lack of consideration is just too far."
"This was my first thought," someone else agreed. "She needs to intentionally expose him to divorce papers."
And someone else thought the LW should take drastic measures to make sure their kids stay safe: "Seems like she should be getting a restraining order to prevent the husband from taking the children anywhere without her express written consent, at bare minimum, if not against him coming in close contact with all three of them. This is 'emergency hearing' stuff, since he could even still be sick by then and wanting to take them somewhere without her."
Columnist Nicole Karlis was also disturbed by the LW’s story.
“To be honest, my fingers are feeling a bit numb on what to type here,” she wrote in her response. In part because this was a story of a person whose spouse “does not believe that COVID-19 is a big deal. But mostly because your husband intentionally exposed himself, you and your children to COVID-19,” she wrote.
“So, yeah, I'm a bit speechless, too.”
To Karlis, the question isn’t whether or not the LW’s husband did this on purpose — it was how to deal with this unquestionably reckless behavior.
“His behavior was, indeed, selfish and reckless. Point blank,” she wrote. “And this type of selfish behavior doesn't bode well in a marriage with kids in the middle of a deadly pandemic.”
She even sought out advice from clinical psychologist Dr. Carla Marie Manly, who agreed that “when a partner fails to consider the needs, rights, and safety of the other partner or children, this type of overtly selfish behavior can create mental and physical health issues in the long term,” she explained.
It’s one thing for the LW’s husband to refuse to get vaccinated, quite another for him to expose their family, Manly argued.
"This type of behavior not only exposes his wife and children to harm but also impacts their ability to engage in normal social and school/childcare interactions," Manly said. "The selfish and thoughtless nature of husband's behavior may be indicative of underlying narcissistic tendencies that will make the relationship difficult to bear in the long term."
The doctor advised that the LW stop rewarding him for behavior that crosses her boundaries.
In other words, her husband can get his own dang soup.
“It is only through exercising natural consequences of reckless behavior that he might learn to consider the impact of his actions,” she explained. And if the LW’s husband does try follow through on his threat to take their kids away for Christmas “a call to the police may be in order," Manly added.
As for Karlis, she ended her response with remorse.
“I'm so sorry you're going through this,” she wrote. “You and your children deserve better.”
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