Solidarity thread for those with partners working from home.

[ClintBartonsWife]

DH is back to working from home this week.

At the end of last week I ordered some fancy chocolates, just for myself. I hid them in a drawer in the dining room.

Now DH is working in the dining room all day I can't sneak them out, and in the evening the children are around.

Anyone else feeling a bit put out that their other halves are back getting in the way again now that we have WFH in place?

@blueshoes

I am working from home. I wonder how my dh feels about me being around. Actually neither of us gives this any headspace. We are too busy WFH.

This. Both DH and I are working from home though DH recently went back a couple of days a week . But we have been doing this for two years now and I just don't get the massive irritation it seems to engender against partners on here

Obviously I exclude households who are home schooling or where one parent has to look after pre school children at home but other than this situation I really don't understand the annoyance on here towards partners who WFH. And I am still working in the living room through which DH and DS have to walk to get to the kitchen and DH is basically working in an upstairs cupboard. I find the constant WFH difficult sometimes but it is never about having DH at home ( which just makes life easier generally) just about the general lack of space to work in peace from home

Mine had to be practically forced to do a couple of days back in the office. If he tries to come back to working in the living room 5 days a week I'll lock him in the car with his laptop.

Sorry op it's also been good here I don't know how I would have coped without him wfh.
He does one very hard school run which has helped me out enormously!
All the isolations!
Appointments etc.
However home delivery has been tricky, especially gifts for him!

@Comedycook

I get it...pre fucking covid, I enjoyed a lot of guilty pleasures while he was at work like watching shite tv, eating bad food, daytime naps, doing my fake tan in peace...now he's always there and I feel permanently judged! Oh and everyday he asks me "what can I have for lunch?". Even worse it's school holidays next week and they will all be at home ffs

I do all these things from home . DH just last laughs about it mostly and it would not occur to me to give much of a monkey what he thinks about this. DH also naps sometimes eats shite and plays shite computer games ( when not working) . None of which bother me much either

Some of us forced to wfh are not massively happy about it either.
I'd be horrified if I knew DH resented me being here.

I'm definitely with you OP. It's not that I don't like him, because I do, it's just we have a small house. I don't want to know everytime he empties his bowels, or never be able to take a break and watch TV for an hour, or spend a day cooking. It's unrelenting and it's crippled my mental health.

I’ve never resented DH being at home. I resent him working from home. Big difference.

My dh is lovely but hard work...very extrovert and very opinionated about current affairs and news for example...I'm an introvert...I find it exhausting

Sending unmumsnetty hugs to everyone who is finding it difficult. It's ok to feel that way and it's understandable. Some people genuinely do find it hard to miss out on that down time alone and that doesn't mean that you love your partners any less than some of the sainted folk posting on here. It just means that you are wired differently and have different emotional needs.

What I do find fascinating is the posters accusing me of being resentful, of being massively irritated, etc. I think you'll find if you reread my posts I mentioned being "a bit put out" and "finding it hard to adapt." Something, something Freudian slip perhaps?

My DH is lovely. Lovely man, lovely dad and all round good egg.

It’s not him being at home that’s stressful, but him working from home.

He’s based in the dining room which is a through route from the lounge to the kitchen. It means that if I want to bake or cook I’m disturbing DH and he’s disturbing me. Simple pleasures like baking mince pies listening to Christmas music can’t be done. OK, it’s a small thing but there’s loads of small things like that.

Tbf it didn’t bother me too much before I had DS, but then I did find it intrusive. Like living in an office.

@manysummersago

My DH is lovely. Lovely man, lovely dad and all round good egg.

It’s not him being at home that’s stressful, but him working from home.

He’s based in the dining room which is a through route from the lounge to the kitchen. It means that if I want to bake or cook I’m disturbing DH and he’s disturbing me. Simple pleasures like baking mince pies listening to Christmas music can’t be done. OK, it’s a small thing but there’s loads of small things like that.

Tbf it didn’t bother me too much before I had DS, but then I did find it intrusive. Like living in an office.

I hear you! The little things are definitely hard.

I work three days a week, working in an adult protection remit. On my days off I like to try and get the housework done so I can relax with the the family at the weekend but I can't run the hoover around when DH is on Teams, or listen to the radio etc. It's not the end of the world (I work in adult protection so I'm not completely tone deaf as someone implied earlier) but that time means a lot to me. It means I'm less stressed and a better person.

Why didn't you just wait until he went to the toilet to sneak your chocolate out of the room? :)

Why didn't you just wait until he went to the toilet to sneak your chocolate out of the room? :)

I get it op and neither of us work from home generally!

There's nothing worse than your plans being interrupted by an unexpected presence. I found my self at home on my day off unexpectedly with ds1 the other day as I hadn't written the teacher training day in my diary 🤦 completely ruined my plans, much as I love him it wasn't what I planned for that day...