- My partner, who works at JP Morgan, and I have worked from home together for a year.
- She’s now being forced back into the office because JP Morgan issued an RTO mandate.
- I’m worried this will take away the quality time we spend together, and it has ruined our goals.
My partner works at JP Morgan, and she recently received the company’s full-time RTO mandate.
She and I have worked side-by-side in our home for the past year. Since she joined JP Morgan in 2022, she has worked from home two days a week. Meanwhile, I’ve been working remotely as a freelancer in sports marketing.
Starting in March, my partner will have to go into the office four days a week — and that’s only due to the lack of desk space on-site. Once that’s resolved? The assumption is that she’ll be in the office full-time.
My partner and I have spent much of our relationship benefiting from the ability to work remotely.
Having been told that her employer, JP Morgan, is now demanding full-time office hours, I’m concerned about how our relationship will be affected — not only in the immediate future but our long-term goals, too.
Working from home brought us closer together
My partner and I both live hectic social lives. Time spent at home and in each other’s company is precious. Two days a week working side-by-side might not sound like quality time, but it encompasses a lot.
We typically walk and talk on our lunch breaks while catching some fresh air. We sometimes cook lunch together and escape whatever work woes occupy our brains. We often catch up on chores during the workday, facilitating further time spent together in the evenings that would otherwise be occupied with the mundane.
Thanks to working from home, she also forgoes the hourlong commute at both ends of her workday, giving us even more time together.
That precious quality time is something I’m terrified we’ll miss.
We had long-term goals that were tied to our work-from-home jobs
Since my partner and I worked from home, we were able to plan for our futures outside work. Our main goal was to travel. I had hoped our jobs would head toward full-time remote work, allowing us to travel whenever we wanted.
We planned to visit cities that interested us for short stays. I imagined us finishing our work days in an Airbnb and then stepping outside in the evening to explore a new part of the world.
Traveling and keeping our full-time, remote jobs was our long-term dream.
I thought the consistent evidence that we were fully committed to our roles and fulfilling our job duties would get us to this dream. But I was wrong. We worked hard to be forced back into the office.
I’m scared of what comes next
My partner is about to start working four days a week in the office. She thinks it’s only a matter of time before she must be there five days a week.
Gone will be those shared lunch breaks and the connection they offered. Gone will be those extra hours of personal life that no commute or lunch at home permits. But that’s just the small stuff.
The big impact? We can no longer look toward the future for travel plans. I’m still learning to deal with the loss of our dream. When we met, our ambitions aligned. It felt like we’d be able to experience the world as a couple — without sacrificing money, career progression, or love.
All of a sudden, it feels as if our hot air balloon has burst. Thanks to the weight of realities we previously thought were untethered to our ride, we’re drifting back down to Earth.
While I’m sure we’ll survive this change to our dynamic, the world suddenly feels a little smaller. My hopes, our hopes, feel a lot more distant. It’s been a sucker punch to a dream that would have felt unreal to experience.
