To be thinking about ending things because of my husband working from home?

[Opentoskychange]

I used to come on here a lot but signed up again. Been married to DH for twelve years, have two children aged 3 and nearly 1.

DH had to work from home in March 2020. It was challenging, as our eldest (2 at the time) knew he was there and would constantly want to run in and out, showing things to Daddy, not really understanding that he wasn't available. It was pretty stressful. When I had our second, it was just at the start of the second lockdown and DH was still at home. I really found my second maternity leave awful - just a constant stress of keeping children quiet and entertained and not too loud. I found it stressful when the baby cried or when the toddler left a mess everywhere. It was just him being there all the time. His office reopened back in May. However he didn't go back until recently. He's supposed to be back one day a week, I have Mondays and Tuesdays off work. He is supposed to work Monday in the office. But the thing is he often doesn't go or changes the day at the last minute and to be fair to him it is a genuine reason, it's something like someone needing a lift and they work Wednesday or whatever. But it means my two days a week, which are supposed to be for the children, are spent either high stress keeping them quiet and away from him or out and about - which is hard going when the weather's bad.

It also means I don't see much of my family, my mum visited last week but it was awKward as DH was there and she kept apologising for "making a noise" and "disturbing him" and saying "ssh" to me. I can't have any friends over to visit on my days off and I'm feeling increasingly isolated. I'm fed up and constantly stressed.

Increasingly I'm feeling like I dont want this from life but can't work out if it's just the fatigue of lockdowns or not. Any advice?

Is there any particular reason you chose to walk on eggshells around him rather than having an open conversation?
I would even go as far as tell him that you are sick of pretending your home is a quiet working place just because he can't stick to one place and need to move around. It's very inconsiderate and selfish and you just don't feel like you're enjoying living alongside him.

I can sort of relate to this as my DH WFH drove me mad, altho my DC are a bit older.

Firstly, I think it sounds like you need counselling to try and reconnect and understand each other a bit better. If you’ve honestly tried enough just talking and he won’t listen, this is your last hope really.

And secondly, in the meantime, stop giving such a shit about him. If your kid wants to show daddy the picture, let them. When they cry when he leaves the room, tell him he needs to sort it or let them follow him. Let him deal with the fallout of his actions. Really, stop caring about pandering to him and just do what you want at home. Disco music full volume? Do it!! When he complains explain you’ve been trying to communicate about this for X months now. You’ve had enough!! If you make it less attractive for him to be at home he might just get off his arse and get into the office.

I think the OP is getting too hard a time on here from some posters. My memory of looking after small children is that they were so demanding and so mercurial that I was desperate to maintain control over anything that I could. So we had a routine, we had packed lunch if we went out and I would know exactly when and where they would have it, I had everything they needed ready as far as possible and yet even still, despite all that, very small things could blow up hours or even the whole day into screaming and a domino-topple of outrage leading to overtiredness, over hunger, and a whole list of other things.

I hated it when things happened like the landlord saying "I'll pop round and take a look" without saying when, or anything else disrupting my control over our space and time. I needed full control over everything to have any decent quality of life at all, by which I don't mean actually being able to do anything I wanted to do - just not being constantly screamed at.

I have put that very selfishly, but actually it was certainly nicer for my children too not to be upset to the point of screaming for more than the minimum we could manage.

OP your husband is being a massive dick. Your home is your work place; and you are doing a really important job; and someone else is fucking it up; and you are quite justified in identifying the situation as untenable. Only you know if you really have to end your marriage, but maybe you do if your H can't get it any other way.

Is this a house or a flat? Do you have the money or space for a home office?

That or moving would probably be cheaper than divorce.

DH worked from home for the first seven years of DS's life with occasional trips overseas. Then, after a few years in a full on office, worked from home 1 or 2 days a week. And in 2020 he started WFH again full time. He's just gone back to the office but now works 1 week in the office (other side of the country) and 3 weeks at home. Possibly because he's always done it I like him being home.

We worked out the ground rules early on. The home, when DS was a toddler, was DS's playground. Neither DH nor I wanted him to grow up feeling he couldn't be a kid in his own home. So DH invested in noise cancelling headphones, set himself up in the spare room and we set a rule that if the door was shut DS wouldn't go in, if it was open it meant daddy was happy to look at drawings or hear DS's news. Daddy would join us for lunch then he and DS would have a cuddle and a 'goodbye' just like he would if he was leaving the house. That was DS's cue that daddy was now at work. But DH would never expect us to be quiet. If he finished early for the day he'd take over the fun and games with DS so I'd be able to sit and have a break.

I'd invite people over for playdates - it's DS's home so his friends were and are welcome. DH would pop down to have a cuppa, a quick chat then disappear (again with the cuddles denoting he was going to work). If the kids wanted to run around the house, they ran. DH had the door closed and his headphones on. Job done. DS even used to say to his friends 'don't go to that room, the door's shut, daddy's working'.

I have never felt I cannot make a noise in my own home. I run a small craft business from home now - which I started when DH was working full time in a 'normal' office. I hammer and I saw as part of that business and if, though he never has, DH doesn't like that he can find somewhere else to work. I was there first and I can't exactly take my tools to Costas!

I don't know if any of that's been of any use OP but your DH needs to work out a way of working from home that means his children can still use their home and you need to work out if his remarks mean he's annoyed or he's just remarking. For example, if my DH said 'yes I know' if I had said our DS was a handful one day, I'd take it as a 'yes, and I sympathize, you're doing a great job' rather than 'yes, I could hear him, keep him quiet'.

Can the children wave daddy off to work then you take them for a walk. Dh sneaks back in. Kids don't know he's there. But yes, not the best reason to divorce. Talk to him.

Seriously I don’t understand the problem - just do what you want in the house and let the kids bother him all day and make noise and maybe hel get fed up and go the office

My husband is at home half the week and I do whatever with my baby make kids of noise - he can put headphones on if it snots him or go the office - not my job to keep the baby quiet

Get a shed or garage conversion done to be used as home office. We didn't have this option. So had to rearrange and make one room into home office. Whoever needed to do calls and needed quiet place would go there and other in the kitchen. Eventually in second lockdown I managed to squeeze a small table from market place into my bedroom so I work from there. Doors are always closed upstairs any "noise" from kids or tv is restricted to downstairs. All the toys and games console etc live inside an ottoman and which is downstairs. Also recommend noise cancellation headphones.

@Fupoffyagrasshole

Seriously I don’t understand the problem - just do what you want in the house and let the kids bother him all day and make noise and maybe hel get fed up and go the office

My husband is at home half the week and I do whatever with my baby make kids of noise - he can put headphones on if it snots him or go the office - not my job to keep the baby quiet

The problem is that for some reason, OP doesn’t feel like she can do that.

What is the reason though? Is it her, or is it him? That’s the key thing.

It sounds like you have wider problems than your DH not listening to you or respecting your wishes. Does he do his share when he's not working?

Be normal on your days at home. Invite friends over and make as much noise as you wish: he can then bugger off back to the office where he belongs!!

I think this is a more subtle problem than keeping the children quiet, and him disrupting the children by flitting in and out. I am much older, and some of my friends were distraught at their partners retiring, and being at home all day. It is more a feeling of never having your own space, add to that, having to parent with someone else always listening in, I think it could feel oppressive, as well as the pressure of having to go to work yourself part of the week.

I'd just live my life as normal and if he finds it impossible to work with that then he'll have to go somewhere else.

Seriously I don’t understand the problem - just do what you want in the house and let the kids bother him all day and make noise and maybe hel get fed up and go the office
The DH isn’t going to go to the office any more than the OP is going to come back to the thread.

@Merryoldgoat has it.

I've no sympathy given his office is now open

@Opentoskychange I know EXACTLY how you feel. Every post resonated with me. My DH worked from home long before covid, and let me tell you it never gets better. The children have grown up but they grew up with simmering resentment too. My eldest said to me recently that when she used to come home from school and sees the car gone (= Dad is out, which was a VERY rare occasion) it made her very happy secretly. It started in him slowly a lifetime of lethargy and unsociableness and we were slowly cut off from people. I had the same issues as you, unable to invite friends over etc. In the end we divorced. I wish so much I'd done it sooner and salvaged some of the children's childhood without him.

My dp is loud and works from home in one room. If he spreads out I shout until he goes back. Zero tolerance. It works or there would be murder NOT suicide. Wfh can be a problem, leave him there with the kids and go out, he will catch on. Pig

. it's seeping everywhere and it's toxic. He isn't the man I married.

What? Because he sometimes wanders into the kitchen to make a cuppa/have lunch? You can't do crafts with the kids because he asks what the kids are doing and dares to make conversation? This is exhausting just reading it. Either you are being a martyr, or you are genuinely depressed and feel couped up and can't see a logical way forward, in which case I think that you should talk to your Dr.

@PurpleOkapi

Why would bedtime be disturbed? How late is he working, and is he really so clueless as to go into a sleeping child's bedroom and wake them just so he can interact with them?

She doesn't actually have to deal with the crying children. If she's explained to DH that popping in and out makes them cry when he leaves, and he does it anyway, she's entirely within her rights to just send them back to him to deal with. If he doesn't like that situation, he can quit causing it.

But that seems to be only a small part of the problem here. She also talks a lot about noise and mess and wanting the radio to be on. She's set completely unrealistic expectations for what she "needs" to do, apparently without any indication from DH that any of this is necessary. Rather than discuss any of that with him, she's contemplating divorce because the work she's created for herself - that he never even asked her to do - is just too hard. It looks to me like she wants to leave him anyway, and she's just grasping for excuses.

The bedtime disturbance was when he unilaterally changed their drive out to the point the children fell asleep and it knackered bedtime.

I have tried to speak to him but while he listens, he doesn't actually hear me.

She’s told her husband. She’s considering divorce because he knows what he’s doing and doesn’t give a shit.

It’s amazing how many people have turned this on her. He’s a man who clearly doesn’t give a shit about repeatedly upsetting his own children and doesn’t listen to his wife yet it’s all down to the OP according to some.

I feel your pain OP we were in a two up two down with a three year old with sensory problems and a back yard. Both of us working at home and my husband also doing a degree. It was hell on earth. We turned one bedroom inti an office and the other for sleeping in. It was the only way. Could your husband not go in to work now for a better balance?

Don't be mindful of the noise. Let the kids go up to him and disturb him constantly. Have your friends over. He will quickly find ways to hide when he needs quiet time. I enjoy WFH because I find the office (I have my own office at work, all alone all day) too quiet!!! I like a chat, TV in the background etc. When I need to focus n sth really difficult or go on a call , I go to a different room.

Go about your life and see where it gets you. If he starts shushing you or telling you're not to have guests, then consider leaving him.

Is it just me or does the household dynamichere sound kind of odd?

It comes across as you are the nanny and you are afraid your employer (DH) will complain about the noise?

You have given him several options on who to minimise the noise and he's ignoring them so let the noise happen. He will deal with it how he deals with it. It may not improve things but at least he'll be aware of the problem and may be more willing to deal with it.

I might be wrong but are you sure there aren't out issues in your marraige and this is just how it's beyond the point of ignoring them? Forgive me but wrong but it just seems that way to me.

I had this! Months upon months of trying to keep a very rambunctious 3 year old quiet. Locking us in one room or spending hours in our tiny garden. Putting up with him making comments, or coming downstairs and moaning about noise/work etc. Generally becoming a sounding board and being called up every 20 mins to check an email or report! Making my life miserable to accommodate dh. Then D's had a fall and cried and I (as I crept upstairs to get the first aid kit) I heard Dh's colleagues moaning about the noise and sympathising with Dh about his awful working conditions, and Dh apologised for his son crying and my inability to keep him quiet. Now I have a thing about people apologising for me. When Dh came downstairs I told him in no uncertain terms that this is a family house first and foremost and if he wanted to prioritise work calls over his injured son or apologise about us again he would no longer be welcome in it. Then I stopped. I stopped keeping D's quiet or making sure we were out for the important meetings. I started rating my job as just as important and entitled to space and respect as his. He's now back in the office and our relationship has improved.

@HollowTalk

He's not listening to you, is he? You need to sit him down and say, "You've got a choice. You either go back to the office when I'm at home with the children or I will start looking for somewhere else for you to live. I can't bear living like this. I've told you time and again how unhappy I am because you're working from home and I can't spend time with the kids without them crying for you. We can't make any noise because of you. I am not going to spend my life like this and I'm not going to let the children live like this. Now make up your fucking mind."

💯 this. You sound like a friend I spoke to at the weekend. Her dh doesn’t normally work at home so when they were allowed back in the office, she told him to go for a minimum of 3 days a week or their relationship wouldn’t last. I totally sympathise.

Can you do this, @Opentoskychange? You sound at the end of your tether.

Unless he can’t go into the office it reads to me he is being quite selfish, going from room to room.. it would be easier if he was in one room all day then breaking out fir lunch and can chat to the kids.
It would drive me mad, I’m on mat leave and dh used to work from home which was sometimes helpful in the early days.. but then he would be in the bedroom when I need to shower and bring baby in to en-suite area.. then he would be on a teams meeting in the kitchen when I needed to make a bottle or something essential. Safe to say he went back to the office yippee