Real Life: my husband has corona because of my lover

Madelief (38) put her husband in danger through her affair. She feels infinitely guilty about the situation.

‘I have been seeing Bas since the beginning of this year. It started during a class party. Everyone was inside, but we both smoked and sneaked out to the big garden. It was very nice, we lit each other’s cigarettes and when Bas grabbed a bottle of wine from the kitchen of the organizing mother and we had two glasses, we needed nothing more.

Of course, I ran into him the next day when I took the dog for a walk and well, before I knew it, I was sitting on his couch. Bas is divorced and lives in the center of Breda, we live just outside, in one of those typical neighborhoods where only happy families live. Better said: families that seem happy. Because it’s not that great for us. My husband has a bipolar disorder (that diagnosis was made only by me because he refuses to see a doctor), so one week everything is great and the next week he locks himself away for four days. When he does say something to me, it’s unkind.

Sometimes when I try to look at myself from a distance, I find it quite sad. A man I can’t rely on, two lovely children who deserve more than this and really getting a wrong impression of what a marriage should be, and me having a lover. But it is what it is. I don’t want to leave my husband because of an illness and divorce seems much worse for the children. What if they have to spend exactly the bad week with him?

So yes, then a lover it is. After an hour with Bas, I can manage another week, no matter how bad it is. Just having coffee together, a glass of wine. And yes, also some very nice and loving sex. I can live off a message from Bas for a day. I feel how much he has come to care for me and how I bring the sun back into his life. I have read that every woman has the right to her secret. Let this be my right.

In the early days of corona, Bas and I decided not to see each other for a while. We texted and even had some secret phone sex. Quite difficult to arrange with a man working from home, so I just drove my car to a quiet spot in the dunes to video call Bas. The things you do for love… Or for wild sex.

But at some point, we both couldn’t take it anymore. We both decided to get tested. If it was negative, we could go for it. But yes, how long is such a test valid? Actually only as long as you don’t see anyone else. In theory, you could get infected five minutes later. But of course, we didn’t want to know, see, or hear any of that. And so we continued as before.

Until I got a message from Bas. If I had time to talk quietly. The cold hit me in the throat. He wants to break up, I thought. No, that wasn’t it, he said. But we couldn’t see each other for a while. Bas had corona. I asked when he thought he had gotten it. We had seen each other the day before.

Panic set in. Should I start calling people and informing them? And what should I say? “My lover has corona and since I was just with him yesterday, there’s a pretty significant chance that I could infect you.” NO WAY José that I would say that. I could have gotten it from, let’s say, the gas station, so greetings. I knew nothing. I just found it terrible that I couldn’t see Bas for ten days now.

I decided to take a walk to let everything sink in, sent Bas a sweet message and promised that I would leave a bag of nice things at his door the next day and went home, to my husband.

He was anxious and sat like a heap of misery on the couch. My husband is a bit older and has a few extra pounds, so he belongs to the risk group. I immediately grabbed the thermometer. 39.5. I froze. This was because of me. Because of Bas. But thus because of me. I had put the father of my children in danger. My husband got worse and worse, so we went to the doctor. Meanwhile, I texted Bas how he was feeling. Bas was okay. Reasonably okay. Compared to my husband, he was enormously okay.

The doctor reacted worried. Where had we been? Where could the infection have originated? We said we really didn’t know. That he always kept a huge distance and look at his hands: thoroughly washed.

Still, the doctor wanted him to be admitted. Not to the ICU, but ‘just’ to the hospital. So now I’m home. Guilty and alone. I would love to go to Bas now. The infection has already taken place. But if I do that, I will really vomit. From myself.’

In this unusual time, we asked people for their honest story. To avoid hurting others, the names of Madelief and Bas have been changed.