Workplace Romance

Workplace romance is not uncommon. Vault.com released a recent survey showing that a whopping 58% of employees have engaged in a romantic relationship with a colleague. A surprising 72% of those aged 50 and older reported having a romantic relationship with a coworker. Reboot Digital reported that 45% of people admitted to dating a coworker and The Journal of Marital and Family Therapy reports 36% of people admit to having an affair with someone at the office. GoodTherapy.org reports that 85% of all affairs to start in the workplace. Clearly, something is going wrong and it's important to get a handle on it and slow this trend down.

I think it's necessary to put this into perspective so let's take a look at how marriages fare as a whole as well as how relationships spawned from affairs turn out. We know first marriages fail at a rate of 67% over the first 40 years. Second marriages fail at a rate of 60%, and third marriages fail at a rate of 73%. Only 4-7% of affairs turn into longer-term relationships, and over 90% of those fail. The average age of the first marriage is 29, and the average age of the first affair is 36. A divorce takes place every 13 seconds in the United States and the numbers just keep going.

The reason workplace affairs happen is that it's where we spend our time and not only do we spend our time at work we are forced to interact in order to produce. Human resource departments are never short on programs to help us all get along better. We team build, we discuss the best ways to accomplish goals, we are forced to refine our communication, be on our best manners and the need to compromise is ever-present. These are all the things that produce closeness and you guessed it, relationship. Glance back over the divorce statistics and you can see that most people are primed for an affair before they ever walk out of the door in the morning. Take a closer look at the stats and you'll see emotional infants at best and emotional incompetence at worst. If a person can't handle the commitment they are in and the stats show us the 2^nd and 3^rd times around don't fare any better, what exactly makes them think a workplace fling will work.

If we spent as much time cultivating the relationships we are in as we do trashing them to other people and looking to others in an effort to get our needs met our hearts' desires, a healthy, securely attached relationship would bloom. In an effort to help you, I have laid out a few suggestions to ward off workplace shenanigans.

• • Stay focused. You have a job to do, and your family is depending on you.

• • Don't flirt. That's a flame you won't be able to extinguish.

• • Process fights and regrettable incidents with your partner. It will keep you in a good frame of mind relative to your partner.

• • Sexual harassment. Remember, you can find yourself facing a discharge not to mention a lawsuit. I once knew a guy who was served in a multi-million-dollar sexual harassment suit on Christmas Eve. His wife opened the door and the process server handed her the paperwork.

• • PTSD. Affairs create PTSD in your partner. As much as you might be at odds with them, believe me, you don't want to inflict this type of harm on anyone.

• • Remember your children. Children suffer severely when their parents divorce.

• • Stay away from habitual one-on-one meetings. One-on-one environments have a tendency to create closeness.

• • Don't give out your cell phone number. This ends badly every time.

• • Cocktail hour. Stay clear of this. Absolutely nothing good will come from hanging out at the bar.

• • Business trips. If you have to travel set provisions in place where you and your partner are in contact the whole time. I have clients who have Zoom sessions all night. They hang out together, watch shows together and sleep with the Zoom session on.

As a therapist, I can tell you affairs are not the answer. Work on your relationship and you'll receive everything you need in life.

Chris Cambas, LMFT, Certified Gottman Therapist & Trainer, Relationship Expert, Co-Founder of CoupleStrong
CEO of National Marriage Seminars & The Practice Startup.