At first, you will probably find it difficult and awkward to
discuss the emotional issues involved in creating and managing this
relationship. It's new and unfamiliar turf and you're not sure what
constitutes the right measure of trust. Your best guide is to sense when
tension ballads--that's when something needs to be brought into the open
for honest discussion.
o Monitoring each other. Two people seldom approach a
relationship--any relationship--with perfectly matched expectations. You
and your partner both know that adjustments in your behavior will
sometimes be necessary to keep things on an even keel. You share the
responsibility for keeping your own behavior, feelings and expectations
in line with the boundaries you establish. Monitoring each other ensures
that open communication takes place when you sense your partner
mayinfringe on a boundary or yield to temptation.
Monitoring each other also sets the expectation of open
communication. You come to your relationship with respect for each
other's intellect, tastes, and competencies. You look to each other to
supplement what you individually bring to your work--to stimulate your
thinking and enhance your creativity.
o Open discussion. You are making deliberate use of sexual
chemistry to become both more personally satisfied and more successful
and productive. The overarching technique you use to keep behavior within
the boundaries you set is open discussion. It short-circuits problems
that tend to build with time. Instead of maintaining the relationship by
one-sided internal coping, you raise concerns to the level of two-person
reasoning.
You clarify areas of misunderstanding where individual
interpretations of events or intentions may be wrong. In time, you'll
probably be laughing at simple misunderstandings. You vent frustrations
to each other as well as understanding and being understood--eliminating
the need to reject and the pain of rejection. The secret is not some
perfect progression through an ideal set of relationship-building steps,
but rather in the openness that says, "Ask me. Let's talk about it. We
can work this out."
o Cooling-off periods. Unlike husbands and wives, you have the
advantage or regular time-outs from each other, away from a nonphysical
but demanding association. In permanent relationships, a large tolerance
quotient is both desirable and required. In this relationship, by
contrast, you are not obligated to keep each other happy or to take care
of each other or to tolerate differences in food or music or television
preferences on a daily and nightly basis. You deny yourselves some of the
privileges of a fully committed couple while you avoid some of their
frictions.
On the rare occasions when work isn't going well, or your conscious
management techniques are flagging, you can acknowledge this is not going
to be the right day to caccomplish much together and step back to a
comfortable distance.
On the good days, this relationship fosters inspired work that is
intense, demanding and fulfilling. When it ends, parting involves
ambivalence. You enjoy what you do so you are reluctant to stop, but you
feel a sense of relief in getting away for a time to relax and be
nourished in different ways with your family and friends. Down time spent
apart allows you to keep a view of your work partner as someone
special.
The "Business Couple"
Nothing promises to replace the committed love of a primary
relationship. But the bottom line is that men and women working closely
together find themselves in relationships that in many ways mimic
courtship and marriage. They ride the emotional roller coaster of success
and failure side by side. They become interdependent. They think alike
and share values. Common goals emerge and are met through mutual effort.
They have a de facto marriage minus the morning breath, the kids'
problems and the mortgage payments. Fresh tailored clothes, a perpetually
clean-shaven face, and a crisp clean shirt spare coworkers the gritty
reality that personal appearances take on at home.
As pretty as this picture looks, however, a review of life's
priorities quickly suggests to participants what it lacks. Coworkers who
are more than friends come to realize that their work partner is not the
one who takes care of them when they are sick, who shares the joys of the
children, who wakes them up on Christmas morning. They take part in none
of the life activities that make their at-home romantic relationships
primary and their work relationships secondary. Above all, the privilege
of discarding boundaries that separate individuals, the free merging of
two people, is exclusive to the primary relationship.
Loving center-of-our-lives arrangements remain the source of our
deepest satisfactions sexually and otherwise, but secondary relationships
provide treasured qualities of narrow depth and exclusive experience not
found elsewhere, especially since professional interests are dominant
factors in our identities. They allow discovery and elaboration of parts
of ourselves that remain unexplored in other relationships--passions for
art or music of sports, say. One very sober "business couple" we know
discovered to their vast amusement that they are both avid Elvis fans. On
a business trip to Memphis they decided to use their free time to visit
Graceland, simply because it's there--something their mates wouldn't do
for money.
Good Work Is Sexy
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