Working from home is supposed to be convenient. But one woman is questioning the arrangement after her boyfriend started using her house as his workspace and she became the one trying to stay out of his way.
Her boyfriend regularly stays at her home Friday through Sunday. Then on Monday morning, instead of heading elsewhere to work, he sets himself up in her dining room for several hours to complete reports, prepare quotes, and take work calls.
Sometimes he stays another night and does the same thing on Tuesday.
The problem is that it’s a small, open-plan home. With the kitchen, dining room and living area connected, she feels like she can’t comfortably use much of her own house while he’s working.
She spends the morning trying not to disturb him
The boyfriend typically works from the dining room from around 8 a.m. until 1 p.m. and spends a lot of that time on the phone.
That leaves her trying to avoid making noise in the kitchen or watching television nearby. She said her choices often feel like sitting outside on the deck, which isn’t always practical with the weather in the U.K., or retreating to the bedroom to watch TV.
All she really wants is to make breakfast, put on a morning movie and relax in the home she pays for.
It starts before he even begins working
The situation isn’t limited to his workday.
She explained that she doesn’t sleep particularly well and is often awake for hours before getting out of bed. But when her boyfriend stays over, she waits until he gets up around 8 a.m. because she doesn’t want to disturb his sleep.
Then he gets up and starts working in the main part of the house, leaving her to arrange her morning around him once again.
There is a reason she’s hesitant to complain
Despite the frustration, she made it clear that this isn’t a story about an otherwise terrible boyfriend.
She said they have a good relationship and that he helps considerably with maintenance around her house and with her car. That contribution is part of why she wondered whether she should simply be more understanding about his work arrangement.
She also said he can sometimes fail to notice how his choices affect other people.
Another important detail: he apparently had no idea that his working from her dining room was bothering her.
She wondered if asking him to move was unreasonable
Instead of telling him he couldn’t work from her home at all, she considered a fairly simple compromise.
Could he work from the bedroom instead? Or, when the weather allowed, could he use the deck so she could have access to the main living area?
She turned to Reddit to ask whether that request would be unfair, given how much he helps her around the house.
Most people thought she should be able to use her own home
The responses largely focused on the fact that helping with maintenance doesn’t mean the main living area automatically becomes his office.
Several people suggested that he work from the bedroom, his own home, a coffee shop or another location where his calls wouldn’t require her to stay quiet. Others pointed out that the arrangement had effectively flipped things around: he was the guest, yet she was the person changing where she sat, when she got up, and what she could do.
But not everyone thought the boyfriend was necessarily the problem.
She finally talked to him
After reading the responses, she decided to bring it up.
She said she told him that while she enjoys having him around, they needed to find a better way to coexist if he was going to spend two mornings a week working from her home.
It was a fairly simple conversation but one she had been hesitant to have because she wasn’t sure whether asking for her own space back was reasonable.
Would you ask him to work somewhere else?
Having a partner stay over regularly naturally means sharing some space. But working for hours from the middle of a small open-plan home is different when the person who actually lives there feels like they need to hide in another room.
In this case, he apparently didn’t realize how much his routine was affecting her until she finally spoke up.
Would you ask him to move his workspace to another room, or would you consider this part of sharing your home with a partner?
