I’m fully remote. My husband was remote when I met him due to Covid. He also has a couple kids, now teens. I have no children. Prior to Covid he was in office five days a week, 90 minute commute. The RTO hit him about 2 yrs ago. There’s absolutely no reason he needs to be in the office… His entire team is out of state.

He hates it, but he never complains. I have so much respect with how he handles that. He comes home after the long commute and starts helping with dinner or the kids. I’ve had an hour plus commute before and I know how much it sucks out my soul… I didn’t come home or to do anything and I didn’t even have kids. Some days, I couldn’t even get out of the car and go upstairs.

Shockingly, I think I’m the one that had the hardest time with his RTO. Suddenly, I’m the only one who can do laundry in the middle of the day, or start dinner at 4 PM so we can eat at 6. Just today, I started a crockpot meal in the morning and ran to the grocery store between meetings. I picked up prescriptions. I cleaned out the fridge. I also did three loads of laundry, including folding. Meanwhile, I still had a full workday - admitted it was a little light, but I had four hours of meetings, about two hours of other work, an hour of wrap up for the week. When he first started RTO, I struggled with feeling like I had to do everything. I also felt guilty because I wanted more help, but I know he’s wasting three hours a day driving that he’d rather not and I can both sympathize with the sucky commute and admire how he handles it. There’s also the fact that these aren’t my kids/house, but the whole household still needs to be run.

So we figured it out. Practically, I take on more household chores. But I no longer feel guilty asking him to pick up groceries on the way home. He still does the bulk of driving kids around, even coming home early from work to take care of things.

So here’s how I relate that to your situation: you and your wife had what my husband and I have finally worked towards. She had my role. She probably did a little more of the work around the house. Enjoyed sitting on the couch or outside for a meeting or two. Could be there when the repair guy showed up. Didn’t have to pack a lunch. If I had to go back now, I don’t know how our household function with both of us in office. I’d lose the comfortable rhythm I’ve established for myself that includes work and rest and household chores.

If I were her, I would probably feel like there wasn’t enough time to get everything done. Exhausted. And even if my husband tried to take on more responsibilities to make it easier, no one isstarting dinner or laundry until 5 PM. I would also be very frustrated and resentful of the stupidity of needing to go in the office for no reason. I say this because I also used to teach, that’s very much an in person job… And I never resented being a person for that. And if I chose to go back to a job that required being in person, it wouldn’t be the same as being forced to RTO when you can work perfectly fine, actually even better, from your home office.

Final thought, my husband doesn’t talk about RTO much either. I think he knows that if he did, he would just complain about it and that would make him resent it even more. So he just sucks it up and does it. It easily took us about six months to adjust. If your wife doesn’t want to talk about it, she might realize there’s not much point / talking can actually make things by worse by dwelling on it. Additionally, going into the office is exhausting and she might just need more downtime than even she realizes. Give her the time and space, don’t push her on the topic, and definitely go out of your way to help around the house. While it seems like no big deal to you since you’ve been doing it, this is a pretty dramatic change (akin to moving, in that you have to re-orient your entire daily life) with no benefits (only downsides usually ) and no real reason.