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Article at a glance

• Working from home isn’t an automatic win for everyone. suggests it can be linked to strain in some romantic relationships and requires careful thought and design.

• Couples’ preferences matter – those that share a more relaxed attitude towards blending home and work tend to adapt better to home working.

• Different or shared strict work-home boundaries can create tension and loneliness – employers should offer flexibility, when possible, while giving employees the final say over where they work. 

When individuals weigh up whether to work from home, the anticipated benefits are appealing – more flexibility, more control over personal lives, and more time with their partners. But our research reveals a more complicated story. Work and its boundaries can drive a wedge between some relationships, and this can intensify the more partners work from home.  

For many, working from home has become a major part of modern working life, kickstarted by the COVID-19 pandemic and continued by popular demand. It offers a freedom not found in an office, and employees seek it more than companies are willing to offer it. But such flexibility doesn’t always come without its own trouble. 

Remote work may pose hidden challenges for some couples, as part of a wider struggle to manage boundaries between their professional and personal lives. Could blurred lines between work and home, combined with different individual preferences, end up isolating partners from each other? And could the fallout be serious enough to prompt couples to consider splitting up? 

Our two studies explored these questions. For our first study, we surveyed some 170 couples in Munich during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a second investigation, we followed more than 1,500 couples across Germany over the course of a year. Both studies featured dual earner couples from a range of professions and levels of seniority, with an average age of 43 in the first study and 39 in the second.  

We wanted to understand how partners’ individual preferences for keeping work out of home life fit together, and whether some combinations are better suited to remote work than others. In particular, we looked at whether these preferences affected people’s ability to be fully present, in body and mind, for their partners - and the knock-on effects for themselves and their relationships.  

Why couples can clash over work 

Couples can sometimes clash over how they approach work during their time off. Some are fiercely protective of their personal time, while others don’t mind the odd intrusion even when they’re no longer at work. The odd email might land during mealtimes, or a boss might phone out of hours. For employees working from home, these differences can become more consequential.  

We discovered that keeping work and home separate can become hard for remote workers – but not always. When couples share a more relaxed approach to work spilling over into home life, remote workers cope better when work inevitably intrudes. We believe that these couples may make better arrangements to work around their schedules, such as sharing calendars to plan their days and take breaks together. 

"When couples take different approaches – say, one favours strict limits while the other is more relaxed – things can become more complicated."

But if both parties prefer to set strict limits between home and work, this is where remote work can get tricky. This combination becomes increasingly detrimental the more time people work from home. When couples take different approaches – say, one favours strict limits while the other is more relaxed – things can also become more complicated. More extensive working from home made these differences more troublesome, but only for men. Quite unexpectedly, women who worked from home extensively benefitted from having partners with different views, and we're not sure why. One possibility is that they may be more open to learning new ways of managing work at home from their partners, but further research is needed to understand this. 

The link to loneliness 

But by far the most concerning finding was the knock-on effect that heightened conflict can have on mental health and relationships. The conflict that people experience when work prevents them from being present for their partners, both physically and emotionally, can lead to loneliness. For some people, working from home can make this problem worse. This loneliness can affect not only the person struggling to switch off from work, but also, to a lesser degree, their partner. In other words, even if someone has no control over their partner’s job demands, they may still feel lonely as a result. This matters more than ever as loneliness afflicts an estimated one in six globally and is recognised by health authorities to harm people’s health and wellbeing. 

As we tracked the couples in our second study, we found that the lonelier they felt, the more likely they were to start talking about splitting up. While discussing separation was rare – around seven per cent of couples in the second study - this was nonetheless a striking finding in Germany, where separation is typically not discussed lightly. 

When individuals and companies negotiate flexible work deals, they almost certainly focus on the benefits, assuming this will lead to greater productivity and well-being. But this isn’t guaranteed - our work shows that there may be an inadvertent emotional toll on some employees and their partners. Individual expectations differ, and couples need to be aware that working from home might affect family life. Businesses, too, need to consider the impact of their working practices on employees’ personal lives. 

Who should decide where we work? 

Knowing there’s a connection between conflict and loneliness, managers could consider helping staff create clearer limits between work and home life when appropriate.  

Few work practices have stoked such controversy recently as working from home. Our work makes the case for leaving the final decision to the employee. Working from home doesn’t automatically cause stress but nor does it guarantee a happier worker. The answer lies, in part, in the preferences of individuals within couples. With this in mind, employees should include their partners in the decision making, and companies should listen to their staff. Ultimately, they are the ones who should have the final say.