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NEXT
TIME THE CONVERSATION lags at a party, just ask a group of dual-earner
couples how they'd like working from home together. Presto! You'll
have your own version of the Newlywed Game, with spouses looking
at each other nervously, some hiding their horror at the thought
and others wondering if their partner likes the idea as much as
they do. Working at home with your spouse can be a nightmare of
clashing roles, or the ideal marriage of work and family. It tends
to fortify a strong marriage, and to wreck a weak one. "It's
like being caught in an avalanche together. You either end up really
tight -- or hating each other," says Raymond Boggs of IDC,
a Framingham, Mass., research concern. More couples are finding
out where they fall on that spectrum. Amid layoffs, restructurings
and a boom in mobile-office technology, about 1.5 million couples
now work together full time from home, either in a family business
or in separate businesses or jobs, IDC says. Also, a growing number
of couples work part time after hours from home, either on regular
jobs or sideline occupations. While every couple is different, a
few traits signal likely success in this marital hothouse.
First, hark back to your college days. Did you study in your dorm
room, or in the library or student union? If you and your spouse
were both dorm-room studiers, says Cynthia Froggatt, author of "Work
Naked," a book on telework, you'll probably be comfortable
working and living in the same place.
Second, you must be able to communicate, communicate -- and communicate
some more, negotiating needs and resentments, both yours and your
partner's. Third, you need a big enough house to accommodate each
spouse's desire for space. And of course, you both must want to
make your work-at-home setup work.
For perspective on what it takes to survive, here's how some work-at-home
couples have coped.
-- Work, work everywhere: For Kate Rogers, the battle between work
and personal life is joined in her kitchen -- at 900 megahertz,
to be exact. That's the frequency where the microwave, turned on
by her husband, Vinnie Scaffa, to heat up his lunch, interferes
with her cordless phone. Leaping up from her desk in the next room,
Ms. Rogers gives him what he calls "The Look," prompting
him to hit "Cancel" on the microwave. The clash reflects
how work technology can seep into every corner of a work-at-home
couples' existence. With four phone lines, two cellphones and a
wireless network in their home near Portland, Ore., Ms. Rogers,
a Siemens Corp. marketing manager, and
Mr.
Scaffa, a Cisco Systems service-account manager, could work every
waking moment. But they've learned to construct mental and spatial
boundaries to preserve personal, couple and parenting time. They
go to separate floors to work. They avoid talking shop. They make
a habit of halting work regularly to be with their son, age seven.
And each encourages the other to get out of the house to see
co-workers and friends. "There's enough work to fill 24 hours
a day," Ms. Rogers says. "You have to draw some kind of
line."
-- Cubicle wars: Gordon Gray, a Palo Alto, Calif., mortgage and
real-estate broker, and his wife, Shelly Gordon, work in conditions
that might bother any cubicle dweller. Sharing an 850-square-foot
condominium, she can't hear people on her phone when he's talking
on his. His office has no door. Ms. Gordon, who runs her own public-relations
firm, works on her laptop from the dining-room table nearby. If
Ms. Gordon waves a hand, Mr. Gray takes his phone into the bedroom
and shuts the door. When he heads to the kitchen to make a shake,
he announces "Blender!" and she gives him thumbs up or
down. The antidote to tension: "You have to be able to communicate
the things that most people just keep inside," Mr. Gray says.
When resentments arise, "we have to go through the eye of the
needle together. She doesn't like it. I don't like it. But we do
talk about it." Mr. Gray knows the stakes: He worked at home
with a previous wife, and believes the stresses accelerated their
divorce. Now, with Ms. Gordon, he says, "we support each other.
It's much better than working alone."
-- We're not inside the Beltway anymore: Invoking the pioneer spirit,
JoAnne and Mike Hildebrand quit the Washington, D.C., area and a
three-hour daily commute in 1989 and set up adjacent desks in a
log cabin on a cliff above the Chesapeake Bay in Port Republic,
Md. "The
pipes were exposed, the windows rattled. It was like camping,"
says Ms. Hildebrand, a university academic director. When an ice
storm knocked out power, Mr. Hildebrand, an emergency-response consultant,
taught his wife to use a chain saw -- then left on a business trip.
She cleared fallen trees and kept the wood stove burning. "You
learn to laugh," she says. For them, the payoff has been a
stronger marriage. They apply the time saved on commuting to talks
and shared walks along the bay. Married 24 years, Ms. Hildebrand
can't remember a time when she felt she and her husband had been
together too much.
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Have a question about balancing work and life? E-mail me at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com,
and read my responses in the Work & Family
Mailbox at WSJ.com.
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Making Marriages Work
Working from home with your spouse can accentuate general problems
in
your marriage. Here are some early warning signs:
1. Your spouse blames all the problems the two of you are having
on
your work.
2. Your spouse starts feeling jealous of your work.
3. You begin using work to escape talking with your spouse.
4. You talk about everything but what's really on your mind.
Source: "Working from Home," by Paul and Sarah Edwards
(Jeremy P.
Tarcher/Putnam)
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