Working from home can bring unexpected challenges to relationships, and in some cases increases the likelihood that couples will consider breaking up. Psychological evaluations show evidence that when remote workers and their partners disagree about separating work and home, the resulting stress can foster deep feelings of loneliness. These research results have recently organizational behavior journal.
To understand how remote work impacts couples, it’s helpful to focus on a concept known as segmentation preferences. This term describes a person’s psychological desire to protect their personal life from work-related interruptions. Some people have a strong preference for segmentation. They prefer to silence work emails after hours and keep work discussions away from the dinner table.
Some people have a low preference for segmentation. They have no qualms about answering simple task messages while watching a movie. You might also enjoy talking about professional projects during family lunches. Problems can arise when people with different boundary styles share a small living space.
Previous research has primarily focused on how flexible working arrangements affect individual employees. These studies tend to view remote work as a tool that increases job satisfaction, but creates an exhausting “always on” mentality. The authors of the new paper recognized this blind spot in existing research. They wanted to know how remote work would impact romantic partnerships that share the burdens of the new normal.
Alejandro Canek Hermida Carrillo, a researcher at Imperial College London, noticed this dynamic in his own life. “During the pandemic, we were all working from home more than usual,” Hermida Carrillo said. “Then it suddenly occurred to me that what was important to my experience was not the tastes or attitudes of my colleagues, but the people I lived with.”
He reasoned that individuals’ remote work schedules do not occur in isolation. Spouses and partners must negotiate physical space, time, and attention every day. “When we work from home instead of in the office, disagreements can have an even more negative impact on our relationships,” Hermida Carrillo said.
Researchers hypothesized that conflict between work and home may arise due to inconsistency in setting boundaries. This particular type of conflict occurs when occupational demands interfere with an individual’s ability to fully participate in family life.
To test these ideas, the authors designed a two-part research project. The first study involved 170 working heterosexual couples living in Munich, Germany. The researchers collected data at two different times in spring and summer 2020. The timing allowed us to observe couples navigating work-from-home arrangements during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Each participant completed a questionnaire measuring the number of hours they worked from home each week. The survey also measured personal segmentation preferences and the extent to which work-family conflict was experienced. Eight weeks later, participants completed a follow-up survey to assess their level of loneliness. Scientists used a well-established psychological scale that asks people how often they feel lacking in their peers.
The study had mixed results on how couples were matched. When employees spent long hours working from home, having different boundary preferences from their partners had opposite effects on men and women. For men, preference conflicts increased their experience of work-family conflict.
The results for female employees were completely unexpected. “Unlike men, the more women worked remotely, the more they could actually benefit from having partners with different segmentation preferences,” Hermida Carrillo said. “This is contrary to our expectations, and we think it may be explained by the fact that women are generally more open to learning from their partners than men in stressful situations.”
The study also looked at couples in which both partners had a strong desire to separate work and life. Work-family conflict increased when both partners wanted strict boundaries but often worked from home. The authors suggest that trying to maintain a hard wall between work and home in a flexible environment creates unnecessary friction.
The data also tracked the psychological toll of the conflict. The researchers found that higher levels of work-family conflict reliably predicted greater feelings of loneliness among individual employees. Because work stress consumes time and mental energy, employees often lack the emotional capacity to connect with romantic partners. This lack of connection creates a sense of isolation, even when couples share the same physical space.
To build on these initial findings, the researchers conducted a second study with an even larger sample. They analyzed data on 1,561 cohabiting dual-income couples from a German national database. This database is widely used by scientists to track changes in family life. This second dataset covered a full year starting in 2019 and ending in 2020 or 2021.
This long period allowed scientists to see how the stress of remote work changes over time. In this broader sample, participants again answered questions about work-family conflict and loneliness. They also answered specific questions about relationship stability.
The survey asked whether they or their partner had seriously proposed separation or divorce in the past year. Researchers wanted to see if feelings of loneliness caused by the friction of remote work could lead to thoughts of ending a relationship. Relationship instability is known to cause severe personal distress and can also reduce productivity at work.
The results of the second study provided evidence that work-family conflict has spillover effects. As the first study showed, individuals’ work-family conflicts increased their own loneliness. However, the second study also found that this conflict increased the partner’s feelings of loneliness. When one partner is emotionally exhausted from work, both spouses feel socially and emotionally absent.
This shared sense of isolation had a severe impact on relationships. The authors found that as either partner’s feelings of loneliness increased, they were more likely to discuss the breakup. Couples tend to drift apart over time when remote work depletes the resources needed for intimacy. Researchers suggest that this mutual loneliness acts as a bridge between work stress and relationship dissolution.
These findings provide practical guidance for couples navigating modern work arrangements. “Remote work is a problem for at least two people,” says Hermida Carrillo. “Individuals need to decide whether and for how long to work remotely, taking into account not only their own but also their partner’s (segmentation) preferences.”
Employers can also draw lessons from this study without overstepping personal boundaries. “It’s unrealistic to expect companies to know what their employees like or what their romantic partners like,” says Hermida Carrillo. “Therefore, we believe that employees should continue to offer remote work as much as their roles allow, and leave it up to employees to decide whether and to what extent they work remotely.”
Companies need to focus on the outcomes of work policies rather than micromanaging home settings. “What they can do instead is monitor the extent to which employees experience negative work interference (i.e. work-family conflict) in their personal lives,” added Hermida Carrillo. “We studied this in the context of remote work, but it was taken as an important step in connecting many other ways of working with harm at home.”
Although the study provides an in-depth look at couple dynamics, the authors note several potential misconceptions and limitations. The first study was conducted during the early months of the pandemic, when general anxiety levels around the world were unusually high. Although the researchers controlled for changes specific to the pandemic, the unique historical context may still influence the findings.
Additionally, all data are from couples living in Germany. “Our main setting is Germany, which is known for its emphasis on a clear separation between work and home life,” Hermida Carrillo pointed out this limitation. “As with most studies of this kind, replication in other cultures is needed, as that cultural context may have shaped our results.” Readers should not assume that all remote work is inherently relationship-destroying.
The researchers recommend several directions for future research. They suggest observing certain daily tactics that couples use to manage boundaries, such as how partners negotiate shared spaces in the office or agree on quiet times. The authors also want to investigate the psychological benefits of flexible working.
“We used to only focus on the negative possibilities in relationships, but recently we have started thinking about the more positive and unexplored aspects of remote work,” said Hermida Carrillo. “Perhaps there are conditions that allow remote workers to engage more meaningfully with the broader community? Or are they able to participate more in their children’s lives? These are under-examined questions given the current backlash against remote work, but are important questions to get the picture across.”
The study, “How will working from home drive us apart? Couples’ segmentation preferences and relationship dissolution in the era of remote work” was authored by Alejandro Canek Hermida Carrillo, Felix Behringen, Russell A. Matthews, and Ingo Weller.
