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> Is he hungry? Is he bored? Does he want coffee? We haven't had lunch - should I cook? I should tidy.

That inner monologue is somehow humorous; but wow, you seem to be such a considerate partner!

I'm a non-eater (24-hr faster, usually this goes along with other manic, focused, driven episodes where I'm really being the best I can be at what I do). I lived for 10 yrs with my ex-gf (still my business partner and best friend) who used to have these worries about me, even though we were both working together. I was like don't worry about me, I'm fine -it was always she who needed to eat. She kind of put it onto me. Eventually, she'd get up and cook herself food. But she was more like me. She was driven to work too.

Now I'm with a woman who's the opposite. She'll come over for the weekend and sit there quietly for 8 hours while I work and the whole time I know she's starving or bored and I feel like a shitty boyfriend. She'll be reading a book or texting her friends and in the back of my mind I'm like, uh, why are you in my house? Like, you could have this much fun in a dentist's waiting room. You think you're not experiencing aloneness but you don't know how to be alone with someone else so we're in this situation where I have a knot in my stomach because all I want to do is work, and you have a knot because you're waiting for me to say something to you. This is not how it was with my ex.

I think maybe if I read way between the lines, you and your bf haven't quite established how to truly be alone together and take care of your own needs (or he hasn't).

On the other hand, this is what it's like to have a pet. The more expensive the pet, the more care it requires. If you're a true nihilist and you don't even enjoy the company, maybe you just enjoy that extra little bit of stress it brings you to have to deal with their problems.

It's true that when my gf or my ex ever had problems, they lit a fire under me and gave me a reason to care; my work became more stressful, but it was in service to something that I finished it. Because there's some other, imminent problem in my life, in the form of another human being who needs my attention. People with children can probably attest to this, although, thank God, I'm not one of them. They say it makes your life seem more meaningful. Occasionally that might be true.

Thanks for sharing. I think in my case it's mostly like you and your ex-gf. I just have trouble internalizing the fact that I don't need to think about him while we're working. My boyfriend says he's totally fine sitting there not getting any attention when he knows we are in work mode. He _does_ have a higher requirement than what I was used to for spending quality time with each other in general, but it does not extend to work-time (according to him). It's just that on weekdays, my entire day late into the night could be work-time. I think knowing quality time is important to him is partly what makes me feel this need to pay attention to him, or feed him, or something while he's here for work. But that is a me-problem vs a he-problem.

He regularly tells me that he is fine eating one meal a day or not at all, but I still feel the compulsion to make snacks all the time when he's here. He is a big person and needs way more calories than I do to maintain his desired weight. Even though he says he's fine with not eating I see him shoveling down three times as much food as I normally do when we do eat, and then making more rice or popcorn later to top up. It makes me think "Holy crap, poor guy hasn't eaten all day and now he's starved." Which is silly, because of course he can get up and get his own food while we work if he's hungry.

I also have pets, and do enjoy their company. They are quite high maintenance, but they're cats. They come over and lick my head when they want attention and then go back to napping nearby. I could not handle children and am in awe of those who do.

> But that is a me-problem vs a he-problem.

I mean, maybe it's not really a problem. It can be really hard to work and live with someone, and there's always a balance; we perceive that it might be rude to switch into work mode and ignore someone who we know wants to spend quality time, but we only care that it might be rude because we do want to spend quality time. We want these people in our life but we want them on certain terms, and that's okay. The boundaries always shift back and forth a little. As long as you're happy with the time you do give them, I think it's natural.

With my ex, we lived together; my current gf and I have separate places. But we quarantined together through most of 2020, and she was out of work. The pandemic really forced a lot of people who might not be so compatible in terms of their expectations for attention, work habits, sleeping and eating habits, into constant close quarters. Almost all of the unmarried couples I knew split up from 2020 to now (some more than once). I think my relationship has survived this long because we're both very aware of each other's needs - including the need for alone-time and boundaries.

Anyway, it's interesting to hear someone talk about it this way. I don't know too many people in parallel work-from-home/relationship situations. I guess it's really just about communication, and it sounds like you do have that in your relationship.

> He sometimes likes coming over specifically to work. He says my focus on work during the day helps him focus and stop procrastinating, too. In the end, we compromise

FYI: That's an ADHD trait, and what you are describing is a common technique to combat executive dysfunction called body doubling[1].

One trait isn't an indication of anything, but a dozen could be; maybe show him this- I wrote up my experience here: https://romankogan.net/adhd

[1]https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Body%20Double

I have a similar issue. Its hard for me to get work done when there are other people around whether its at my place or someone else's. Just the fact that another person is there can be super distracting to me and it makes it difficult to get into a flow state. This is a problem I don't know how to deal with honestly, besides just not working on important stuff when around other people. It does impact me a little at work but luckily I'm pretty solo 90% of the time when I'm there

The mere awareness of stuff happening around in the office is enough to prevent me from focusing on anything. At home, the main source of distraction is the endless queue of undone household chores all around me.

Over half of my committed code has been written at work after hours in complete silence.

If you work freelance with someone who's also your lover, I highly recommend going to a cafe where you can sit across the table and literally only talk about (1) work or (2) a brief, funny thing you saw on the internet, which I don't want to bother you with but it's so good you have to stop for 30 seconds and see it. During your work hours. And where you can otherwise ignore each other, or go on a walk alone, or read a book, and there are servers to bring you coffee or food so you don't have to do it for yourself or each other. And then you finish and you don't take the work home with you. Tip your waiter well.

[edit] This presumes you are really good at working with random conversation happening around you. To me, it actually helps me focus if there's chatter going on. But it really helps if the chatter is in a language I don't understand well.

I'm curious how long you've been dating your boyfriend. I've been with my girlfriend for a little under three years, and I think I would have felt much more pressure to attend to her like you're describing if we were only, say, a year in. (Although I don't actually know, because at that point we were in a long-distance relationship, so all the time we spent together in person was intensive relationship time.)

The other factor for me is that job searching is not like coding: it's a series of separate tasks/decisions/evaluations, rather than me trying to immerse myself in a problem or system, so interruptions or distractions aren't nearly as costly; I'm not going to go into flow state from job searching. And a lot of the difficulty comes from the emotional aspect, so I found having someone to talk/vent to about it very useful.

It's been three years, but a very weird three years (as is probably the case for most people) because of the pandemic. He was unable to self isolate due to his job, and was around hundreds of people daily. I worked from home and self isolated for about a year and a half. There was maybe a handful of times where we could work out ways to spend time together for a few days to a week at a time safely over that year and a half, but for the most part we barely saw each other except in video calls. So I don't think that three years of real time really amounted to three years of relationship time.

Good point about job searching vs coding, I think you're right.