In the tenuous months after COVID, my husband, Mark, got laid off when a larger corporation bought out his company. He found another job quickly — hours away, in Northern New Jersey — and rather than move, he commuted, spending two or three nights a week in hotels and working from home on Fridays.
As an artist and writer, I was already working from home full-time, and I liked the new rhythm of his workweek. While Mark was away, I took over every surface of the house: the dining room table for painting, a second craft table when I had multiple pieces going.
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On Thursdays I’d clear my projects off the table and cook something better than the salads I had been eating in his absence — chili or a tray of baked penne — while the dogs waited at the door for the sound of his car in the driveway. On his Fridays, when Mark worked from home, I’d take my laptop to the coffee shop to write proposals and plan my social media posts, giving him the run of our small house.
Then, at the end of last year, his latest company was bought out, too. Bracing for the worst, we waited to see what this sale would mean for us. Would the new company keep the guy who’d racked up all those hotel bills? Mark updated his résumé and waited. A couple of months in, word came back: no more commuting. He could work from home full-time. We celebrated with a bottle of Barolo.
We were empty nesters
The timing felt advantageous: our son had just moved out. Mark moved his desk out of our bedroom and into the now spare room of our little two-bedroom Cape Cod. It afforded him a door he could close behind him.
Then reality set in.
Plenty of couples have had to figure out working from home together, but most get some warning, or at least a slow slide into it. We got neither. One week Mark was commuting and living out of hotels; the next he was working out of our small house full-time. And I was no longer just his wife. I was his coworker, his only lunch companion, and his only witness to a bad day, often in real time.
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What had seemed like a windfall turned into a logistical puzzle. Keeping the dogs quiet during his Zoom calls. Clearing my art supplies off every surface each evening instead of leaving a piece mid-process. I was used to loudly grunting my way through a Peloton ride on my own schedule and pushing lunch back an hour if a piece of writing was going well. Mark’s days ran on a schedule — a set lunch, a hard stop in the evening.
His office had a door. Mine didn’t. He’d walk through my workspace and ask if he could eat the leftover pasta or whether I’d fed the dogs, right as I was trying to land a pivotal sentence. Showering and shaving became optional for him some days, which was not exactly a recipe for romance.
We both got irritable
There was a social gap, too. I left the house constantly — book club, shopping, pedicures, the coffee shop. Mark didn’t, except to walk our dogs in the woods behind our house. He could go a week seeing only me and the talking heads on his screen.
We both got irritable. Constant close quarters, it turns out, doesn’t make you yearn for your partner. We knew something had to give.
So we made rules. I couldn’t get an office door, but I started wearing a red bandana when I didn’t want to be interrupted. I negotiated to leave art out overnight, within limits. We started eating off TV trays on those nights, and we moved a small figurine between a.m. and p.m. on the dog food bin so neither of us fed them twice. I put in the Peloton headphones and refrained from making my pained noises. We signed up for a meal kit delivery service, and whoever finished work first started dinner. We built in solo nights — guys’ night at the brewpub for Mark, movie nights with our daughter for me — and a standing weekly date night, so we could encounter each other “outside of work.” We looked forward to those date nights, showering (non-negotiable) and dressing for the occasion — and leaving the job behind.
Our work life, like our marriage, is ever evolving. We have learned to lean into the changes. One part diplomacy, one part trial and error. In that spirit, I took advantage of the relaxed atmosphere on our most recent date night to hint that a stand-alone art studio in our backyard might be the next step in our evolution. Mark just nodded and smiled but, wisely, didn’t commit.
