For some newlyweds, W.F.H., or work from home, has a different meaning: work from honeymoon.
When Pooja Shah, 33, was working as a lawyer in New York, she used some of her paid time off for a weeklong trip to the Maldives shortly after marrying Priesh Mistry, 33, in March 2022.
Her work phone went with them.
Ms. Shah’s colleagues encouraged her to disconnect, but she felt guilty doing so, especially because the firm she worked for was about to merge with another one. Instead of relaxing at the pool, Ms. Shah spent much of her honeymoon looking at saved emails and taking notes. She spent hours brainstorming action items and crafting to-do lists to tackle upon her return, because she couldn’t connect to the internet in real time.
“I was in a completely different mind space when it came to work and ambition,” she said, adding that she felt she “could do so much more.’”
Her new husband was, according to Ms. Shah, “very irritated.”
During a romantic candlelit dinner on the beach, or one that was intended to be, at least, Ms. Shah’s work phone pinged with a notification. Mr. Mistry told her, “‘If you want to have dinner with your phone, then I can leave,’” she recalled.
“At the time I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re being so dramatic,’” she said. But hindsight is 20/20. “I get it, she said. “I was definitely obsessed.”
No spouse wants to feel “less important than an email,” Mr. Mistry added. “I understand that life gets busy with job responsibilities, kids and other priorities, but not being able to switch off together, especially while on vacation, is an issue.”
Meredith Grossman, a psychologist in Manhattan, said that “the idea that we can never turn off,” combined with accessibility to the internet make it difficult to disconnect. “Every time you work on vacation and nothing bad happens, it reinforces this idea that you have to keep working on vacation so nothing bad will happen,” Dr. Grossman said. “The feared consequence is almost always worse than the actual consequence.”
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, after one year on the job, around one-third of private industry workers received 10 to 14 days of paid vacation in 2024. But for many who have their own businesses, there are no days off.
For Michelle Nemirovsky and Federico Polacov of Austin, Texas, working on their honeymoon was always the plan. Six months after their wedding celebration in Buenos Aires in December 2023, Ms. Nemirovsky, 35, and Mr. Polacov, 34, the co-founders of Guestlist, an app that helps couples and their guests share information and photos, left for a two weeks of travel around Asia.
They had made a number of posts about Guestlist on social media after their wedding and “we were getting a ton of feedback on new features that people wanted,” Mr. Polacov said.
And because he has a full-time job as the chief technology officer of a software company, the trip was the “perfect time” to work on their brainchild without the distraction of his day job, he said.
At hotels across Thailand, Japan, Indonesia and Singapore, the newlyweds worked during breakfast, and sometimes by the pool, for one to two hours a day. “We were seeing momentum, so we never took it as something that was taking away from our honeymoon,” Ms. Nemirovsky said.
In fact, she said, “it kind of added to it.”
Alicia Spangenberger, a licensed couples therapist in Bellingham, Wash., recommends that couples talk about expectations ahead of honeymoons, or any vacation, for that matter. A large part of the conversation should be about negotiating screen time, Ms. Spangenberger said. “There’s a huge opportunity for couples to sit down with each other and decide symbolically, What is the honeymoon for us?” she said.
“Lead with curiosity,” she added. It “goes a long way to reminding each other that we’re actually teammates in this.”
When Christina Carmona, 34, the founder and creative director of Island to East Side, a company that makes custom beaded bags, went on her honeymoon to Greece in June 2023 with her husband, John Costanzo, she limited her laptop use to hotel rooms. This rule did not apply to her phone, something Mr. Costanzo, 35, will often encourage her to put away on weekends.
While abroad, Ms. Carmona, who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, learned that her company’s bags were going to be featured in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit runway show the next month. “There was a lot of back and forth via text, which I was initially trying to avoid,” she said. “But nonetheless, it was for a good cause.”
During vacations since, including for the destination weddings of family friends, Ms. Carmona is not shy about using her computer at the resort bar or her phone from a pool float.
After all, some “people like to read books,” Ms. Carmona said. “I like to do my work.”
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