Working with your spouse - how to make it work

I often get asked what it’s like working together. In all honesty it not that bad, as long as you both follow simple rules and honour those rules, working together can be fun and rewarding. For work relationships to succeed it’s important that certain boundaries are kept.

Having an office nearby our home where we can both walk to, is an advantage where we can also work from home if we chose to. Having this flexibility allows us to have that distance and ‘me’ space from each other if required. Even though we both generally head to the office, knowing that one of us can work from home helps to keep us sane and allows our marriage to work.

One of the things that we always adhere to is making sure that we don’t bring our personal life into work.  We both have different roles in the company and respecting each other’s expertise is another ‘must do’ boundary between us that we don’t cross. It just isn’t worth it 😊

If you both work from home, and we do occasionally, it is also important to maintain a physical division in your workspace ‘zone’, so we work in separate rooms keeping our distance. Though we do try and make the effort not to work from home together too much. However, we’ve worked from home continuously for four months during the Coronavirus lockdown – without any disagreements or issues.

It is also healthy to book annual leave off separately. I’m not talking weeks, but the occasional day. You don’t always have to be together and it’s important to have ‘me time’ space as mentioned earlier. Physical distance between spouses is incredibly important and frustration can build if you are not afforded the time to be alone or separate. This is extremely important for both mental health and wellbeing - this does keep our relationship healthy.

Another thing which we love to do is, and where we don’t talk work, is have a lunch date. So, every day we leave the work environment, be it home or at the office and spend our lunch time together planning our next weekend break, holiday, house/garden project or social stuff. This keeps us motivated with things other than work and gives us something to look forward to. 

I also think that listening to each other is an important trait to possess. This works for us and is equally important as not bringing a personal problem to work. 

All in all, working together will work for some and not for others. If you respect each other and be there for each other through tough times, then you will make a great team. It won’t work for everyone, but if you stick to your boundaries you might surprise each other. 

We have shared dreams and standards. But most importantly, we love what we do, and I suppose that helps. Maybe we are just very fortunate. 😊