Why Remote Work Is Good For Your Marriage
Answer In Brief: Working from home should be great for any relationship. Working remotely frees up more time to spend with your partner and family but to make the most of this, you do need to set some ground rules and stick to them.
The Covid pandemic changed the game when it came to working and now in many couples, one or both partners is working from home or has the facility to work remotely.
However, this hasn’t always translated into a relationship boon even though spending more time with the person you love ought to lead to a better marriage.
However, remote work can be great for you, your spouse, your kids, and even your pets if you let it be.
Here’s why working from home will be good for your marriage if you just let it be.
Working From Home Needs Boundaries
Even in the strongest of marriages, you need a little space and room for yourself.
If you don’t create boundaries that satisfy both your needs when you start to work from home, you will cause each other stress.
Think about what you, your partner, and your wider family (if any) are going to need.
Ask questions such as:
- What kind of space do you need to work from?
- Will you need to invest in any equipment to make that place comfortable? (Desks, chairs, etc. often need an upgrade in these circumstances).
- When will you be working and what time will be family time?
- What hours, especially, will you need quiet in your home office? Do you need soundproofing?
- What kind of support do you need from your partner to make this work and what do they need from you in return?
This will help you both create boundaries that are meaningful and useful but in order to ensure that stress stays at bay you need to stick to them.
If you have kids, your children are going to need to be helped to understand what’s needed and ensure that you can work from home easily too.
Tackle Household Chores Separately
Once you’ve sorted out the big things that make home work-life bearable, it’s time to look at the smaller details.
If you both work from home then you may find that not much needs to change with chores but it may also be that one partner can now offer more time for chores and the workload needs adjusting for that.
Many couples got lost on the small details during the pandemic and if that happened in your relationship – you may both need to spend some time reconnecting with one another on these, seemingly, small issues, now.
Don’t just assume that one partner or the other will handle something, that’s a great way to make people feel taken for granted.
Work On Communication When You Work From Home
If you thought that communicating with the office was going to be the big challenge of your new life, you were underestimating the scale of the challenge.
Relationships thrive when we communicate well with each other.
It can help to walk each other through your schedule, and routine, and talk every day about just what you need from each other.
Try not to offer unsolicited advice on your partner’s job but instead, you could provide them with the help they really need (which is often just an arm to lean on).
Remember To Make Room For Romance
If there’s one thing that could really make or break your relationship during the hours of your new working life, it’s the effort you put directly into that relationship.
Home workers can often struggle to maintain a work-life balance in the early days of the remote lifestyle.
Couples don’t just need to make sure the work is going well, but they also want to ensure the romance is flowing too.
Take time for a romantic dinner completely free of business talk.
Go for a walk together and hold hands. Woo your significant other.
Even married people have simple expectations of life together and one of the biggest benefits of this style of working should be to put your relationship at the forefront of your day rather than as a side note.
The biggest benefit to having the choice of where you work is that you can give the people you love more of yourself.
Seriously, it’s better than shorter commute times and the chance to slob out in front of your computer in your underpants by a mile. But if you want your marriage to benefit from new routines, you need to give it room to thrive.
Once you do, you will never want to go back to working in an office again – life is richer and better with the people who really matter around you.
