I'm not sure if my marriage will survive working from home with my husband

I’m a freelance writer and I’ve been successfully working from home for many years. I’ve got a good workspace set up with luxuries like an ergonomic chair, an ink jet printer and enough notebooks to produce the doodle equivalent of War and Peace.

What I’m not set up for is “other people”. In order for me to fully concentrate on what I’m doing, I need total silence. A distraction as minor as the postman knocking on the door can set me back hours. It might be anti-social, but it’s necessary.

And so, when my husband started social distancing (also known as working from home), I was a little nervous.

I thought a lot about how we could share our living space so that we could both work effectively. But he flatly rejected my suggestion that he work from the shed. Instead, he set himself up on the dining table, less than two metres away from my desk.

I’ve tried to be pragmatic – he’ll probably be working from home for months, I need to adapt – but by day two, my productivity was sliding and my blood pressure was through the roof.

I’m discovering new things about him. Like how loudly he types. I’ve tried to block it out, but it’s like trying to work with a tiny jackhammer going off at the table.

And that’s when he is doing his quiet work. The volume of his “conference call voice” has left me weeping tears of frustration over my very un-ticked to-do list.

How could this person, who I love so much, be so incredibly noisy? And why doesn’t he like it when I tell him, very kindly, to shut the fudge up?

Worse still, he has taken an interest in what I’m doing. “On Twitter again?” he asks as he plods past me to the kitchen. “It’s part of my process!” I explain.

Yes, it’s a process that involves several hours of procrastination followed by several hours of deadline-induced panic-writing, but it’s a process that works for me. Sort of.

With Chinese officials reporting a big jump in the number of couples filing for divorce, the prospect of spending every waking minute in the company of my husband has me nervous.

“As a result of the epidemic, many couples have been bound with each other at home for over a month, which evoked the underlying conflicts,” an official identified by his surname Wang told the Global Times.

The looming possibility of Australian schools closing doesn’t help matters. If my husband’s noisy email sending is annoying, I dread to think what volume-defying habits my children will be unleashing in my quiet workspace.

It will be hard for them too. My family are not used to spending all their time within the same four walls.

On the other hand, I am an expert in pyjama office wear and sad desk lunches. Perhaps if I can convince them to follow my lead we will all be OK. And if not, I’ve got a pair of noise-cancelling headphones in the express mail.

Of course, every cloud has a silver lining – my husband might be driving me doolally but he does make a very good cup of tea.

Perhaps our marriage will survive after all – as long as the tea doesn’t run out.