To be reconsidering my relationship because of lockdown

[whitemirrors]

I won’t be leaving because we have young children.

But I am increasingly frustrated with DH wfh and I feel it’s forcing a lifestyle on me I just don’t want.

He’s at home all the time. It’s rare he leaves the house. When he does it’s only for short periods like to go to the supermarket to fill the car with petrol or to go to the dentist. Those sorts of things.

Then at weekends because he’s home all the time he wants to be out of the house. I’m exhausted with it.

Don’t know why I’m posting. Just feeling so stifled.

I can imagine how suffocating it is having him WFH all the time so you get no me time. I would go spare without some time for myself.

Can you talk to him about him going out with the kids on one day at the weekend and you get a bit of me time, you don't have to go out together all the time. I often take the kids out and my OH gets some chill out time or vice versa. Then the other day you can do something as a family?

I don't think anyone has called you a bitch op. I hope you're ok... genuine question and I'm not being nasty because I suffer from this very badly but do you have pmt? Sorry it sounds like an awful sarcastic question but I'm being serious. A lot of your responses remind me of myself when I'm suffering from it

i know the OP doesn't want solutions and has said there are reasons but what's stopping the DH taking the DC out in the weekday evenings or going for a walk at lunch?

I totally understand you whitemirrors

Reasons are different for us both WFH however I have had two years of my DH sat in another room every day. Every day, day in, day out. It wasnt like this before as we both went to work or if I was WFH he was out. Now i find it suffocating, if I leave I am asked where I am going. He doesnt go out at all (health reaasons) and when he does I have to drive him. It is important to get a break. So i have started factoring in going out with friends once a week. Also going away with DC for the night and him staying at his parents. You need to think about doing the same as you will go nuts

@whitemirrors also I get the sense that actually your DH might not understand how badly you need time to chill and time to relax. Is he insisting that you go out with him every single weekend?

It sounds like you're struggling in general OP. I really hope you have someone to talk to in real life. You're clearly not in a good place at the mo & I hope you feel better soon.

Comedycook....I thought the same thing.

I think everyone understands that OP has had enough of living cheek by jowl with her DH 24/7.

What’s less easy to understand is her approach to posters on here - general rudeness and obnoxiousness.

It’s a bit odd to ask for help and then insult everyone who responds.

@TatianaBis

I think everyone understands that OP has had enough of living cheek by jowl with her DH 24/7.

What’s less easy to understand is her approach to posters on here - general rudeness and obnoxiousness.

It’s a bit odd to ask for help and then insult everyone who responds.

Reading back I agree. I am wondering if OP may have some post natal depression? She sounds like she's in a very bad place right now.

I’m confused as to how he has all these hours of privacy but you don’t have any too.

Bottom line is you want him out of the house. The only way to achieve that is by splitting which you’ve said you don’t want to do, or him working back in the office. So realistically the only option in your mind is you he needs to find another job. Would YOU be happy to do this if roles were reversed? I’m assuming he enjoys working from home and enjoys his career / job so I can’t imagine that would be an easy conversation. However I do think it’s a conversation that needs to be had. You say he can’t rent an office space because you’re on mat leave. What about when you return? Just one day a week to give you some alone time? It will be a hard conversation to have but the resentment you have for him by simply existing won’t behoove anyone.

Op you sound so stressed, I can feel it in your answers :( I don't really have any advice but just wanted to give you a big hug and say I understand.
I am currently WFH and It IS difficult. Our house is large enough that I can have an office to work from but I still hate when everyone is at home. I would like the house to myself for a little bit but it does not happen often.
Also maternity leave? That can be hard, managing a newborn and having your husband in the house all the time.
Is there any chance you could get away for a night or 2 with a friend, away from the house and hubby?

@whitemirrors I’m sorry to labour the point but why can’t your DH work from a bedroom. A bedroom is a room with a bed in it. A dining room /kitchen is a room with different furniture. Unless he needs to be near a kettle or you’ve no WiFi single upstairs (which can be fixed) he can work in a bedroom. If you only have a two bed to be honest I’d be considering moving DD into your room and turning that room into a proper office as the impact of her being in your room is likely smaller than him being in the living area.

People are trying to help.

You are clearly upset and unhappy.

Therefore People are suggesting ways to change that.

It's not going to be perfect, no one can wish the pandemic away.

But if anyone is unhappy then they need to make changes. Either in the short term or the longer term.

If this is life forever then you need to move house to somewhere bigger with a separate office in the garden. That won't solve the problem overnight but there can be solutions

All these women who cant cope with the lack of privacy. When did your husbands ever get privacy at home? After work? At weekends?

The thing is, i think men tend to have more of a sense of entitlement to family/shared space than women do.

DH would have no problem putting on loud music/film, having loud phone conversations, wandering round in his pants, turning on the tap when someone's in the shower etc etc

But I'm always thinking how stuff affects other people in the house so I feel like I can't do these things IYSWIM?

@whitemirrors

helen the problem with that are that once you have voiced this - once you have said ‘your constant presence is making me miserable’ it is difficult to come back from that to how things were.

He is for all I am irritated by him just now a thoroughly decent man. I do not wish to hurt him and I certainly don’t want to sabotage the relationship and voicing this would.

As I keep saying, to the ire of people like the poster above, sometimes there are no solutions. And (not aimed at you Helen) if that makes you angry I think you are the one with problems, not me.

I'm not angry. I would just say though that you're already a long way from where things were.

Good luck OP.

I’m posting with some trepidation here as I like my head attached! But I can sympathise to an extent as DH has worked from home for years, and it did become a bit of an issue when I was on mar leave (and beyond as I didn’t return to work in the end).

What worked for us was rearranging things so DH now works from the corner of our bedroom, but that obviously won’t work for you. So can you create a barrier between where he is working and where you are in any way? A folding screen perhaps, or a door curtain if you have a doorway without a door? And can he use headphones and a mic for calls, which would cut down on the amount of sound from you that gets picked up. Or can he move around the space he’s working in to have his back to a wall, so you can’t be seen behind him on calls?

Ultimately I get that you aren’t keen on renting a co-working space, but think about this hard - even when you go back to work, you are still going to want some time alone at home, there will be school holidays, you may just want a day off on your own. A co-working desk, even just one day a week, might not be so much a cost as an investment in the long-run, in giving you both some space. Or maybe even move house, in the long term.

But perhaps if you could get some sort of barrier set up in the immediate term, that might help.

Like I said, sympathies, have been there and it isn’t the easiest.

I get the impression that the OP is a ‘keyboard warrior’ and wouldn’t say boo to a goose irl.

OP - I completely get it.

I've felt overwhelmed and smothered during the whole of lockdown. I really value alone-time and it's in short supply.

When my OH was working at home it drove me mad, despite being in different rooms - similar to you I got "what's in the parcel? Have you ordered something else? What are you doing? Where are you going (if I looked like I was going out)?" - just constant badgering. In your shoes I'd feel exactly the same.

I hope you manage to find a way forward, whatever that is.

It wasn't clear from your OP that you have considered all solutions and there aren't any like renting a desk out of the home. I understand why you would want to vent

I had an h who worked from home and spent lots of time creeping around being quiet but his calls were generally only an hour or two a day so he used headphones at other times. (This isn't a solution that I'm suggesting so don't bite my head off please)

Your reaction to the initial suggestions is pretty rude. Not hard to come up with a general rule why he can't rent a desk (Calls involve private information) or the bedroom being unsuitable because it's an open plan apartment or whatever.

I understand why it's grating eg acting like a single person and only making himself a hot drink during the day or feeling judged when he comes down when it looks like your being lazy when you've gone to the loo for 30 seconds.

Realistically if he can't work out of the home then your only choice as a family is for him to look for another job. It's going to get increasingly harder to stay out as baby gets older and won't just nap in a buggy.

@whitemirrors I had a similar experience of the first lockdown. I was on mat leave in a small flat and even though dh was working in a separate room from the living room and kitchen, he was in a room that I needed to be in a lot. Noise also carried etc so I never felt I could be too noisy etc. I spent a huge amount of time out of the house walking, mainly because it gave me some alone time. But that got very dull very quickly. I’m an only child and I really like my own space, and I understand that feeling of wanting your own space at home (rather than out and about - it’s not the same). What saved my sanity was dh leaving the house every day for an hour or two after work to take the baby for a walk. I could watch something, or cook with music on loudly, or have a bath or whatever, but the key was I KNEW that every day I would get that time when I would be in the house alone. I know it’s not the same as having him out all day, but it was enough to stop me going completely mad. I personally needed a break from baby as well, but if you wanted alone time with baby, he could go alone some days. Your dh sounds like a good man, and I’m sure there’s a way to frame this suggestion without saying something he’ll find hurtful. I think it’s totally fair enough that you want alone time at home.

The same for the weekends. Get a standing commitment that one morning every weekend he gets up with baby and goes out. It’s not every day (but realistically, who gets that every day even in normal life unless you don’t work) but it might just take the edge off and make life feel more bearable.

All the people going on about space probably can’t appreciate how some home setups are just not good for wfh. Our flat was dreadful for it. But we have since moved, have more space, dh is further away upstairs and the house does feel a bit more empty. But I agree it’s still not the same psychologically as having a truly empty house. So other solutions are still needed. I know you aren’t keen on suggestions of solutions, and maybe ‘solution’ isn’t the right word because it implies the problem can be completely solved. But I do think things can be better, even if not what you would like in an ideal world. I hope you are having a nice morning out with baby. I hope you can find a way to make things better.

We also (DH and I) did end having a Talk - not about him driving me bonkers, but about how our home was his workplace but also a home for me and ds. And how it was not reasonable for us to have to tiptoe around, so we needed to find a solution together that worked for us all.

No one has said you're a bitch. Not one person

Haven't RTFT but at least one person had called the OP a bitch before this was posted.

I find it bizarre the way people are piling on to the OP for voicing sentiments I personally found quite relatable.

There's a reason for the phrase "Distance makes the heart grow fonder" Take care OP I understand where you are coming from. I have a hubby and adult son home all the time

I don’t think I have ever felt a more negative ‘vibe’ from a poster ever. I can almost feel it reading the OP’s responses.

OP I think if you’d said something like ‘I don’t wasn’t advice just a sympathetic cat’ or ‘can anyone relate?’ this would all make more sense. The thread title suggests you’re thinking of breaking up your relationship. No wonder people are trying to get more info to therefore help.