To be a bit horrified by DHs suggestion that he works from home FT?

Can you build him a shed/garden office?

A friend’s husband wfh during Covid, she said she ended up wanting to kill him! After normality returned, he still wfh a couple of days a week and she says she encourages him to go into the off. I think a garden office might work, but with dc, it must be so hard!

Dh and I wfh (me 3 days a week and dh ft) but we have an office each so even when one of us us off with ds the other person has no impact as they are in their office.

The 4th bedroom is my office space and I can close the door and not disturb the house although, I'm not noisy apart from my podcasts and I can tolerate house noise unless I'm in a meeting or on a call which isn't often but the closed door usually fixes that. The noisiest bastard is the dog when the postman arrives, she goes feckin mental.

So if he has space to close off to and stays in there, YABU. If he's on the kitchen table on calls demanding silence then I'd say YANBU.

Unless he’s proposing that he works from home full time literally in your dining room/living area then I think you are being unreasonable.

As long as he has a home office or similar that he can go into and close the door behind him then it’s no different to him being in the office except it saves him any commute and gives him that time back in his working day.

My husband has worked from home full-time for around eight years. He has an office and closes the door, and the rest of us just go about our lives.

The really crucial part is whether there’s a room he can designate as his office, and whether both of you can feel undisturbed if he’s in there with the door closed. If my husband was working in the family room or something, I’d probably go crazy.

We have young kids in school and I’m a SAHM, so it’s had a nice benefit for us. We can have loud sex during his lunch break. 😁

DH's company all went WFH permanently just before COVID. We had to shield for 18 months so that was myself and a 1 year old being quiet as we could be. DH was on the ground floor so we had to keep walking through to go into the garden. We then moved and part of the deal was somewhere that had a big enough garden to put a garden office in and cheap enough we could extend mortgage to do so. I also WFH 3 days a week and it's bliss as we don't hear each other and normally a quick "fancy tea/lunch/break" suffices. Also means the kids don't disturb him once I'm back from the school run. Definitely recommend a garden office if it's financially ok to do so.

@TedMullins it's very different when there are children involved who get upset that Daddy is next door but can't play or engage with them at all, or when Daddy pops through for a coffee but can't stay and it's mum who has to deal with the resulting tantrums and upset.

Two autonomous adults who aren't going to throw tantrums because one person is on a work call or concentrating are hardly comparable.

Seems I’m in the minority but I do think YABU - it’s his home too and if he wants to WFH full time he should be able to without feeling like he’s an annoyance in his own house. Of course, he shouldn’t be expecting you or the kids to be silent all the time or curtail your lives around his work, or for you to wait on him and bring him food and drinks while he works, but if his mere presence in the house even if he doesn’t disturb you causes this strength of feeling, it sounds like the marriage has more issues than this?

I don’t have kids but my partner and I live in a one bed flat. I WFH full time in the living room at a tiny desk and he’s at home during the day 75% of the time as his work is more evening shift-based. Sometimes we watch something together on the sofa while I’m working on my laptop. I lived alone before he moved in and certainly wouldn’t take kindly to him telling me to go to an office more (I’m freelance so there isn’t even “an office” for me to go to). It doesn’t cause us any issues though - and I’m someone who likes alone time! I like it when he’s out for the evening or goes away for a week with a friend, and sometimes I solo travel and work at the same time. But equally when we’re both home it’s fine, I can’t imagine I’d want to be in a relationship with someone whose very presence I resented so much so I don’t really get this attitude I’m afraid, especially from people who do have a whole spare room to work in!

I wouldn’t cope, it changes the atmosphere in the house even if they are shut away.

WFH only works if there is a room where the door can be shut so you can forget they are there. I WFH mostly FT, I go into my room and shut the door and my family only see/hear me if they come into the room to grab some shoes/jacket or I come out for loo or to make myself a quick lunch and say hello.

When ds was young I don't think I would have done it on the days dh had ds at home as the risk for interruption/distractions/impact on dh and ds would have been too much. Commonsense says it doesn't work well with young children at home.

I like @BigFatPuddingMonster 's phrase "You're working in our home. I'm not living in your workplace." - and tell him it's fine, but under those terms. He needs to understand young children might wander into his working area, there will be noise (he can wear headphones), they will have play dates etc, and he needs to be in a corner of the house where a door can be shut and not disturbing others either.

@BigFatPuddingMonster nailed it immediately.

Before he makes the decision, you tell him that. No tiptoeing around, no fetching things, no winding the kids up, There will be play dates, no work trumping home IN your home. If he agrees, you act accordingly.

DH works from home, DD is at school and I WOH. But his hours are different to mine so he's often working while DD or I hangs around. DD will shush me sometimes but he doesn't.

Just act like he’s not there. It’s the only way to survive.
Hes making the choice to work in the home. I’m sure he has other options.
Carry on doing what you need to do.

Tell him how you feel as he may feel the same soon as you tell him and you both get a second chance at life

If I felt like that re my OH, I'd tell them

YANBU. A home is a home, it's not an office space. WFH has lots of advantages but this definitely isn't one of them.

I think if he's going to do it, he needs to have a dedicated work space and not pop in and out all day long. He can have a kettle/mini fridge in there for drinks and snacks so he doesn't keep wandering into the kitchen and disturbing you and the DC.

My DH works from home most of the time. He's in the study with noise cancelling headphones on. If we've got lots of friends over all day (as we do in the Easter holidays), he takes his laptop over to his mums and works there. The only problem we've had is with some visiting kids going into the study.

The worse thing that happened to my relationship was my partner deciding he was working from home full time. Made home life unbearable. We didn't have a room for him to work. Eventually resulted in me having to move out

I WFH full time and have done so for almost 10 years. Unless you live alone, it's only viable IMO if you have a room that can be dedicated to being the workspace. I'm fortunate to have that and my wife (now retired and previously only part time) barely sees me. I for my part can work without disturbance. I think if I had to work in the kitchen or living room she'd probably have burried me under the patio by now and I can't say I'd blame her. So you are absolutely not being unreasonable. It's a home first and foremost and all those who live in it have a right to enjoy it as such.

With the ongoing drive for employees to return to the office, and the clear benefits to some of hybrid or full WFH, I think it would be really useful for employers to factor in whether employees have a suitable home environment before deciding if WFH is appropriate. That would save lots of couples/families arguing over the impact on home life.

I’m recalling Prof Kelly in South Korea, when his children, toddler & baby on walker invaded his study when he was on a video call and Mum attempting to extricate them.

@BigFatPuddingMonster identified the situation succinctly.

I was a sahm when kids were little and DH hot footed it back to the office pretty much as soon as he could after covid. Whilst it was nice in many ways having him home, it was stressful for all of us having to accommodate him working (our house didn’t have an upstairs study he could shut the door on) with preschool age kids in the house.

He does wfh fairly often now, but the kids are at school now and are also old enough to understand not to disturb him too much.

I think this is the unreasonable bit.

It’s fine to say he needs to work out of the way and be mindful that it’s your home, and even that he needs to work out of the home somewhere when you’ve got planned play dates etc… but saying your marriage wouldn’t survive knowing he was anywhere on the premises?

That makes it sound like it’s on its last legs anyway. It’s really unreasonable and quite hurtful. At that point, you are just saying that you don’t want him around.

winding the children up by being in and out and out and in, no play dates, can’t do anything involving noise (so nothing basically)

This is your problem. If he's WFH and it means you can't do all these things, then there's a problem. If he's making you feel that way, the problem is with him. If it's all in your head, then I sympathise, but you need to get over it.

It is phenomenally difficult, even if they are in an office in the garden!
Run. Run for the hills!

We both work hybrid and each take leave to care for the kids when the other is wfh. Also they come home from school to a house where people are working. Husband went through a phase of interviewing a lot of people online. My policy is that we are wfh, we haven't taken the kids to the workplace. If he's interviewing he uses the upstairs spare bedroom as this means he gets privacy, I usually use it as a lot of my work is confidential. He tends to work downstairs but wears headphones.
It only works because we are considerate and communicate. We also bring each other drinks but leave them outside the room if we aren't sure! Lunch breaks don't always match but sometimes he makes my lunch for me to eat after. It can be really nice but also odd because our stressful times don't match.