When Both Partners Want Clear Boundaries

The more hours individuals spent working from home, the more their boundary preferences mattered. Among those who spent the most time working from home, the researchers found that problems were more likely to arise within couples where both partners strongly believed that work and home life should be kept separate. These couples experienced greater work-to-home conflict, or work interfering with their home life. This is likely because remote work made it harder to maintain their preferred boundaries.

In general, the researchers found that this conflict was associated with increased feelings of loneliness for both the employee and their partner, which in turn predicted a greater likelihood that couples would seriously discuss separation or divorce.

When Both Partners Prefer Flexibility

Couples in which both partners were comfortable blending work and home life adapted better when either partner spent a significant number of hours working from home. Because both partners preferred flexible boundaries, this created less work-to-home conflict than in couples who wanted strict separation.

When Partners Have Different Boundary Views

Although the researchers expected that couples who didn’t see eye to eye on work and home boundaries would have the most trouble, that’s not what they found. Instead, the impact depended on gender. Men and women responded differently when their preferred approach to separating work and home did not match their partner’s.

When men had different preferences from their partners about keeping work and home separate, working more hours from home was associated with more conflict, regardless of the man’s views on working from home. It didn’t matter whether the man preferred to keep work and home life separate or favored a more blended approach; if his female partner didn’t share the same preferences, he was more likely to report that increased work was interfering with his home life. Again, generally, the researchers found that this type of work-home conflict was linked to greater loneliness and a higher likelihood of discussing breaking up.

But when women had a different preference from their partner, the opposite happened. When women spent more hours working from home, having a partner with a different approach to work-home boundaries was associated with less conflict. The researchers aren’t sure why men and women responded differently, but they suggest that women may have been more likely to see their partner’s different approach as a resource and use it to develop new strategies for managing work and home demands. Men may have been less likely to adapt or learn from their partner’s WFH views.

WFH Can Create Challenges

“Unlike long hours or irregular schedules, which are readily seen as risk factors, WFH is typically framed as a remedy for work-family stressors. Our findings caution against treating WFH as a universal good,” the authors write in their paper.

Previous research reinforces that work-from-home is not necessarily a “universal good.” Flexibility can be especially valuable for women, who often shoulder a greater share of household and childcare responsibilities, by making it easier to balance career and family demands. However, that same flexibility can also reinforce traditional gender roles if women default to handling all the household chores during the workday.

Talk Before You Bring Work Home

When deciding to transition to more WFH hours, the researchers of the new study suggest this isn’t just an individual decision, but one that should be discussed between partners. This transition can be so fraught with problems that the authors even suggest that employers could promote couples therapy to proactively support the shift to WFH. Before bringing work home, couples should discuss their views on boundaries and household responsibilities to ensure their expectations are compatible.