Office Romance

An amalgam of statistics suggest that more than 80% of today’s U.S. office workers either have been involved in or observed an office romance in their workplace. I wonder if this data reflects an enormous social change or just an acknowledgement of an old reality.

My own parents’ happy marriage was the result of an office romance. World War II had just ended and my mother and father were both in the Navy, stationed on a small base together. According to my father, he looked out the window of his office and saw my mother walking across the courtyard and was struck by lightening. He asked his coworkers her name, and pursued her relentlessly. He said that this was strictly forbidden as he was an officer and she was enlisted. Despite many obstacles, they made a life-long marriage out of their office romance.

My parents’ true story is exceptional, but more the product of the people themselves and their circumstances than romantic fantasy. Yet, despite our reluctance to admit it, their story is a secret icon for office romance. They got the brass ring most of us want.

As a woman in business I have observed many office romances. Almost none of them have had any positive outcome. Distance and closeness battle every second. Loyalty and duty are conflicted in every action. Unrelenting stress is levied on the participants.

Any woman who thinks she can have an office romance without the knowledge of her co-workers is dead wrong. Even if you are the most discreet people imaginable, other workers will know. You will reveal your romance in a subtle glance, or a change in routine, or the way you interact. If you have an office romance, others at work know it.

An office romance can create turmoil, disruption and anxiety in the modern workplace. Breakups are wrenching for everyone. Co-workers are resentful and uncomfortable when romantic issues crowd workplace pressures. The resentment is not envy, but a sense of violation of the safe haven of the workplace.

Business itself walks a fine line with regard to office romance. Few companies have a "policy" regarding office romance. Even if they did, rules do not stop romance at work. My own parents had clear rules to disobey. A company’s culture typically dictates its behavior toward office romance. In some workplaces it is an accepted phenomenon, and in others it is not. My parents’ commanding officer hosted their wedding reception in his home on the Navy base. That likely would not occur today.

Managing people in a modern office romance can be a nightmare. No business decision is made without conscious or unconscious weighing of the romance. I have had to consider and to plan for how a disciplinary action toward one party in a romance would affect the critical work of the other party. Many managers will not even broach the subject, except to gossip like everyone else.

Romance between workers who are married to others is commonplace. I have a friend whose married immediate supervisor is having an affair with a married former supervisor of hers. She saw them in a compromising encounter, although they did not see her. She was very anxious about how her rocky relationship with her former supervisor (the man in the affair) would influence her new supervisor (the woman in the affair). My friend felt that her career had been jeopardized and her workplace had been polluted with issues that did not belong there.

Rather than angst alone, my friend confronted her current supervisor with her anxieties, supported by what she had seen herself, and heard from others. A very telling silence ensued. Then, she was offered assurance that her job would be affected only by her own performance. At least now she is not the only person worrying. But, she is probably the only one of the three looking for another job. She is a casualty of someone else’s office romance.

People choose to be in an office romance. It is not an accident, or some uncontrollable act of fate. A person can be attracted to another person, and choose to pursue, or to not pursue, the attraction. Romantic feelings do not require romantic action. There is always choice involved. There are times when an attraction develops at work. The attraction is not the problem. It is what you do about it that can be the problem.

My own mother died before I was old enough to ask her serious questions about her choices in life. My father spent a great deal of time and enormous effort to get that first date, so I suspect she had reservations, perhaps about an office romance. I do not know.

I do know that she had no regrets once she made her choice. I think she weighed my father’s character and decided he was worthy of the risk. I suspect her choice cost her the career she had built, as she left the Navy a year later.

But, I know that both decisions were hers, born of hard choice, and not romantic illusion.

That is likely what made her office romance a success.

Copyright © 1998, 1999 by D.E. Summerville. All rights reserved.

The advice and suggestions in the Women in Business column are solely those of the author. DC Web Women assumes no responsibility for its content.

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