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

6 December 2025 at 07:00

It’s one thing facing a major diagnosis; it’s quite another dealing with your partner pulling away. But does the stereotype match the reality?

Jess never dreamed that she was going to get sick, nor did she consider what it would mean for her love life if she did. When she first started dating her boyfriend, they were both in their late 20s, living busy, active lives. “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.