Pre-pandemic, most office workers might have said, like me, that working from home sounded like a dream. Rolling up to your desk to check your morning inbox in pajamas, catching your first meeting on your front porch or eating a hot lunch on your back deck. What’s not to love?
But, as in all “grass is greener on the other side” situations, there are some unexpected downsides. After a decade of marriage in which both of us worked full-time outside the home, the new change in venue, where I work from home and my husband still heads out to his nine-to-five job, has become our No. 1 marital rift. It’s the little things that get too big, such as whose job is more taxing and who might be more inconvenienced dealing with day-to-day tasks, like picking up a sick kid early from school.
Turns out, I’m far from alone on having work from home (WFH) and marital issues. One Reddit user shared that she and her new husband seldom have sex since they both started working from home, likely because they are together all day.
Another WFH woman posted in January on DC Urban Mom that she wanted to say hi to her WFH husband and chat a bit during the workday, while he didn’t want to get out of his work “headspace.” And one Slate advice column headline reads, “My Husband’s Remote Job Made Me Lose All Respect for Him — He’s often lounging and sleeping while I toil away.”
So, why does working from home put such a strain on a relationship? Here are a few reasons, from my experience:
1. The Default House Manager And Parent Is The One At Home
“Mom, there’s no more lunch money on my account. Can you come to the school?”
“Hi, Ma’am, I’d like to offer you and your neighbors a discount on solar panels.”
“Hey neighbor, did you know your sprinkler is causing a flood outside?”
These are just a few of the numerous interruptions through the years that come from working at home. With five kids, both of us obviously expect this to some extent, but the parent on the “flexible” work-from-home schedule is often the one to answer the call — or the doorbell.
2. The Laundry (And Dishes And Dinner Prep) Are Calling
I can feel it looming outside my office door — the mountain of clean laundry to fold. The dirty breakfast dishes in the kitchen, that I’d previously not have worried about until I was back home from work at dinner time. These, and numerous other household chores, seep into the expectations of one or both partners when work from home is in play.
Laura Danger is a Fair Play facilitator and educator. (“Fair Play” is a framework that aims to improve equity in relationships.) “As a coach, I’ve had this topic come up many times,” she says. “Couples will want to know whether or not it’s fair for the work-from-home adult to be doing housework throughout the day.”
Early in the pandemic, I thought it was a total blessing to be able to keep the laundry pile moving between Zoom calls. Now, I realize that although that is true, I’m also never able to completely be “at work” like my spouse is.
“Where things get sticky is if one partner is home chipping away at housework during the work day, [and] the whole family benefits from less work and more free time,” Danger says. “The work-from-home partner may resent carrying that responsibility — especially if it’s unacknowledged.”
3. We Have Different End-Of-Day Needs
After a long workday, I realize I haven’t seen another human most days whose face isn’t behind a computer screen. By contrast, my husband has been talking to people, sitting in meetings and dealing with management tasks, and he could use some peace and solitude. That’s where the problem begins. We want different things after work.
A Quest For Balance And Work-From-Home Marital Bliss
Now a solid four years into this imbalance, my husband and I have established a few practices that help bridge this gap. First and foremost, we now have a mutual understanding that, in spite of what we thought in the beginning, both of us are working hard all day and don’t have to prove who is more exhausted after work — even if one of us had the option to stay in pajamas.
We’ve also learned that while he doesn’t want to leave the house after work, I’m ready to get out of it, so I’m often on after-school pickup from daycare, which sometimes turns into running some errands for a change of scenery.
Sometimes we have a 10-minute coffee chat and meeting after work — short enough to be manageable for him but long enough that I feel like I’ve talked to another adult and had some connection.
Finally, aside from thawing something to make for dinner, there’s no expectation anymore that I’ll accomplish anything except work. I’ve even started trying to move deliveries, repair people and other interruptions to outside work hours to create fewer interruptions in spite of my flexible WFH job.
Danger has a few tips of her own as well, including:
- Recreate the benefits of the lost commute — without the traffic. “While commutes and coffee breaks are not fully autonomous time, they are often segments of time where a person can take a brief break from being responsible for decision-making or physical work. That time to mentally check out should be a part of the conversation when talking through household responsibilities,” she says. For me, that means a 20-minute walk or front porch coffee break to decompress after work, or even heading out for a simple errand.
- Come from a place of curiosity. “A work-from-home partner may feel stressed by clutter, and … like they have no other choice but to do the work during the day. Telling them, ‘Don’t worry about it! Just leave the mess!’ can feel dismissive. If a work-from-home partner is feeling pressure to get things done, be curious about why. Do they feel pressure for the household to look a certain way? Do they feel like the mess is an unfinished task, nagging at them all day? Have a conversation about where the pressure is coming from and what supports or adjustments to the expectations or division of labor could help ease that anxiety.”
- Redivide the tasks. “If [the WFH] partner ends up doing many physical tasks, like cleaning or organizing during the workday, the other partner may be able to take administrative tasks like scheduling appointments or signing up [the kids] for extracurriculars during their lunch breaks … [Or] two partners could trade off responsibilities where one party handles housework during the week and the other steps in on the weekend to make things feel more balanced.” She also recommends dividing tasks and determining a ballpark timeline in which they will get done, so it doesn’t seem like it has to be during the workday.
- Check in regularly. “We go through different seasons and have different needs at different points. Whether you work from home or not, sharing honestly about your capacity, whether or not you’re overloaded or can take on a little extra, and checking in with one another regularly [helps].”
- Determine what’s best for your own partnership, not what’s “normal” or “right.” “The question doesn’t need to be if they ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’, but how you as a family can approach the household so everyone’s needs are accounted for. It really comes down to being able to communicate on an ongoing basis about capacity and household needs.”
With some tweaks, having one person at home and another at work, or two people working from home, can have its benefits once you work through the obstacles. If nothing else, the 20-minute lunch walk outside might counteract that laundry mountain stress.
Photo by Srdjan Randjelovic/Shutterstock
