Partner bugs you while you’re trying to work
Q: Your partner or roommate won’t leave you alone when you’re working from home. How can you nicely say to leave you alone?
A: Living and working from home over the past few months has been trial and error. This is a really good time to have a discussion about establishing boundaries.
Announce a family meeting and make it official over text or email, with a time and date that works for everyone.
Discuss work schedules and breaks. Maybe you are the one who had to work on the couch, and now you’d like to work at the kitchen table, or vice versa. You may also want to discuss what you and your spouse or roommates will not talk about during the workday. For instance, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., you won’t discuss chores or the kids (unless it’s an emergency) because it pulls everyone out of work mode into house mode.
— Julie Blais Comeau, chief etiquette officer at Etiquette Julie
A: It’s important to be empathetic when talking to your partner or roommates for a couple of reasons: One is that the more you understand what they are trying to get out of the interactions (Relief from boredom? Comfort from anxiety or loneliness? A more level playing field with housework or child care?), then the more you can help resolve the underlying issue, so that you don’t keep having this problem.
Don’t be afraid to have a larger conversation about the roots of the problem if it keeps cropping up.
With roommates, of course‚ you have more leeway, but empathy still helps. Offer a concrete solution, such as “It’s really stressful for me to break from my work in the early afternoon, but can we catch up at 4:30 when things wind down?” This offers a path forward rather than just saying what not to do.
— Andrea Bonior, psychologist and author of “Detox Your Thoughts” hgreenspan@chicago tribune.com