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There is no "standard model".
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When you come home from work, or when your significant other comes home, how good are you, are they, at leaving all the work trials and tribulations at the doorstep and simply "being present" with your SO? I realize that "being present" means occasionally hearing about work, but how consuming is it? Do you agree on, say, 15 minutes of venting time? Or does work issues consume the entire evening, or not at all?
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I might check my work email or otherwise login to my work computer from home outside of working hours once a month. Most of that has to do with deployments; I'm doing educational software and we can't deploy until kids are done on the system for the day. That's generally between 4:30 and 5 my time (stupid timezones to my west  ); but occasionally is later and logging in around 7 or 10 for 5 minutes to kick off a deploy and make sure it goes as planned is less annoying than staying late on days I got in around 8 instead of 8:20.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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It's an unequal balance but I'm usually okay with it. My beloved is an elementary school teacher so I need to listen to her frustrations with people and policies (Sometimes makes me want to take a bat and "explain" things to those who are causing her stress) and her own imposter syndrome worries.
She doesn't understand nor cares about what I do so technical challenges are met with an "I don't care" but if there are interpersonal problems she does listen.
I've come to accept it after over 30 years of marriage.
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Nowadays I'm pretty good with that - we do talk about things at work occasionally, but the pressure of the work does not came home with me (or her)...
It took some years to learn that however, but I was lucky and finished 'school' before wedding...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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I believe it depends on frequency; if you or your SO do it occasionally after having a really bad day it's one thing but if done constantly it's another.
Monday starts Diarrhea awareness week, runs until Friday!
JaxCoder.com
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Agree
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Mike Hankey wrote: but if done constantly it's another.
Yes, exactly!
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I often use the time it takes to commute home (subway/walking, so no car driving stress) to clear my mind of work.
When I get home, I play on the computer a little bit, do chores (food, cleaning ... )
It happens a couple times a year that I think about work at home and need to log in remotely do check something.
I don't have work emails on my phone but I have Teams installed, I look at the messages, but rarely respond. (when on vacation, I uninstall the app.)
When I was in a relationship, GF and I talked/ranted/vented about our work while preparing dinner; that was the extent of it.
I'd rather be phishing!
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I'm having a functional employer, so I mostly have to listen.
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Like flipping a switch.
I'm either working, or I'm not, so If I'm not meant to be working, it just stops.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: I'm either working, or I'm not, so If I'm not meant to be working, it just stops.
Nice!  I tend to be that way -- pretty much no matter how work goes, it doesn't require venting when I get home. Though if something cool happens I do like to share the positive things. I guess I just want home to be a positive experience, the negative crap can be left outside in the cold.
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We have it all worked out to perfection:
Whatever she wishes to share is gone into in great depth and usually more than once.
Whatever I wish to speak of has the subject changed as if I never said anything.
Or, in other words, a married couple.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Working from home. No SO.
Email client and Teams are running 24/7 (well, ok, I make a point of shutting down the Teams client on weekends), but the email client is only running on a VM that can't bother me if I'm not logged into it. My work mailbox is not monitored from anywhere else so I don't get popups from anywhere but on that one machine. I make sure to disconnect from all my work-related VMs every evening so I don't get any work-related distraction from any source. No visual cue, no sound, nothing - that goes a long way to keep everything separate.
[Edit]
Nobody of my family either understands what I do for a living nor care to hear about it. So I don't bring it up.
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My wife is in charge of 9 restaurants with the furthest one being around 200 miles from home. It's a highly stressful (but well paid) job which requires her to be away from home an average of 3.5 days/week so we spend quite a bit of time on the phone. Of that time, at last half is spent with her venting about work or traveling. I rarely complain about work mostly due to the fact that she wouldn't understand. 
I've come to understand that commiseration comes with the territory, though her entire family is really over the top with it...and lucky for me, cell phones mean that they (mostly her narcistic brother) can all have me on speed dial for when something goes wrong or in most cases, because they're bored.
I probably average about 2 hours a day on the cell phone with the wife and/or brother-in-law, mostly in a listening mode. The worst are the afternoon calls. They derail me to the point that it's often hard to get back into finishing what I was working on prior to the interruption. I've quite often started the afternoon with the intention of working late only to spend an hour and a half on the phone in a therapy session.
That's it, I'm done venting!
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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kmoorevs wrote: They derail me to the point that it's often hard to get back into finishing what I was working on prior to the interruption.
That would drive me nuts. Can you ignore non-wife calls during that period and request your wife to only call/text if it's really important during that timeframe?
/ravi
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote: Can you ignore non-wife calls during that period and request your wife to only call/text if it's really important during that timeframe?
Personalities that need to call like this Freak. The. ![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif) . Out. if you try to deflect or defer their concerns.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote: Can you ignore non-wife calls during that period
Yes, to the point that it would be apparent to most people that they were being ignored. When I don't answer it's usually followed by another call in 20 minutes or a text message stating that 'You must be busy!', as if that's the only reason I might not be available. I miss the BC era! (Before Cellphones)
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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kmoorevs wrote: I probably average about 2 hours a day on the cell phone with the wife and/or brother-in-law, mostly in a listening mode. The worst are the afternoon calls.
That's 10 hours a week. You're a better man than I--unless there's an emergency I need to be made aware of, I simply don't take calls during the day, unless it's from my boss, a co-worker, or a customer (and customers don't have my number).
I've made it clear to people that--despite the fact that I work from home--I have regular work hours and as such, if they wouldn't call me during the day at an office miles away to discuss something, then it can wait until after work. Everybody now knows calling me during the workday to tell me their printer isn't working will only get them on my sh*tlist.
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I've heard a Chinese story.
One day, a man visits a carpenter at work, and observes that he is having a bad day at work - the wood he is working on is chipping into pieces, and he is not able to accomplish even simple tasks; the carpenter is visibly angry. Evening approaches, and it is time to go home; and the carpenter's anger still continues. The man accompanies the carpenter to his home and observes; the carpenter gestures with his hands on a bush at the entrance to his house. At that moment, astonishingly, the carpenter's anger vanishes, and his mood becomes cheerful. As he enters his house, he greets his wife and children with a wide smile, and spends the rest of the evening and night in a cheerful mood. Next morning, this cheerful mood continues, till he reaches the entrance of his house, where the bush is located. At the bush, the carpenter again gestures at the bush, and his angry mood returns. Thus, it is the bush which separates his workplace mood from his home mood. He "deposits" his workplace mood on the bush, and is always cheerful at home, irrespective of his workplace tensions and worries.
However, in this age of 24/7 connectivity, with notifications of official emails reaching us 24/7, this concept of a "bush at the entrance" seems next to impossible. .
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Amarnath S wrote: the carpenter gestures with his hands on a bush at the entrance to his house
I can't shake the feeling something got lost in the translation, but I think we all get the point.
And the problem-solver in me is thinking it would be more efficient to move that bush to the construction site. I don't want to be the guy sitting next to him during a commute.
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You lost me at "significant other". My SO is Visual Studio. 
/ravi
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 This is something that took me over 20 years to figure out with my wife, who doesn't work outside the home. I've now become pretty good at unwinding on the 20-25 minute drive home. If I reach home and I'm still grinding away work-wise, I'll tell her I need some time to unwind, go to my office and relax a bit.
Even now, every so often I'll have to tell her I'm going to be an S.O.B. for the evening, and will spend most of the evening to myself.
Software Zen: delete this;
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OK, yes, the company Christmas do is always rather quiet ... but I do win "Employee Of The Month" every time.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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