Frisky Business

Why love in the workplace is flourishing.

By Mary Loftus, published on March 01, 1995 - last reviewed on October 01, 2009

Contrary to conventional wisdom, and despite the danger of sexual harassment, there's a lot of loving going on in the office. The warming of the workplace reflects a much more wide-scale upheaval in the ways we work. Given endless work weeks, the reclaiming of emotional wholeness, and a new ideal of love as partnership, it makes a lot of sense to a lot of people--except the human resources department. In an age of full disclosure, it may be wiser anyway to meet under fluorescent light than candlelight. But don't look for guidelines just yet in the company handbook.

The first time I met my husband-to-be, I handed him my resume. I wasn't looking for a spouse--just a summer internship. But I ended up getting both, one five years after the other. I'm not sure when professional regard took on a personal demeanor. I can't name the moment our relationship changed from collegial to consensual. Perhaps it was when I noticed that his eyes matched the blue of his chambray shirt, or the afternoon I drove by the office just to see whether his car was in the parking lot.

I knew it was reciprocal when he gave me a trilogy of Tom Robbins books, wrapped in a road map, as a going-away present before I returned to college.

"Keep in touch with the News, and with its charming, albeit cynical, editor," said the enclosed note. "Just because his heart is cold like stone doesn't mean he is unappreciative of a smile on a pretty face."

I still have that note. It's stashed away in a closet with other mementos of our relationship--boxes of letters, our wedding album, our son's first lock of hair.

So finding love in the office seems like a good idea to me.

And I'm not the only one. Most offices are awash in romance today. According to several studies, about 80 percent of employees have either observed or been in a romantic relationship at their workplace. In a marriage announcement in The New York Times, the groom, who had met his bride at work on Wall Street, took time out from the proceedings to tell an observer: "If we think our employees aren't having romances, we're crazy. We need to come up with a productive way to deal with it. To say this can't happen is ignoring the reality of men and women."

Perhaps in this era, where singles are seeking full disclosure, it's wiser to begin a relationship under fluorescent lights rather than moonlight or candlelight. Secrets aren't as seductive as they used to be. There's a growing awareness of the dangers of making the wrong choices in bed, along with higher expectations about compatibility in marriage.

"Not being into the bar scene, I was more comfortable meeting at work," said David Kamp, who met his wife, Karen, on the job at a defense contractor plant. "We had common ground to begin with; we didn't have to create it."

The emerging awareness of love at the office reflects a whole set of changing rules and relationships in the workplace. Companies that find a way to accommodate love among workers may be fostering the psychological health of modern men and women. The approach could have a positive impact on the competitive health of the company itself.

THE GENDER SHIFT

With the sexual integration of the workforce, an increase in age at first marriage, and longer work hours, the office has become a natural place to find an intimate confidante, sex partner, or suitable mate. Sociologist Pepper Schwartz, Ph.D., sees this as a healthy move--backward.

"The new news is old news," says Schwartz, professor at the University of Washington. "There was a time when men and women were linked economically as well as for emotional survival. Now we think of couples as just emotional units. But before that, they were a survival unit. Well, the world has taken another rotation, and we're back to being economic partners--by preference as well as necessity."

Historically, few women worked outside the home until the late 1800s, and men and women seldom mixed socially after marriage. In the 1890s, women began to move into the workplace, albeit in subordinate roles. Even in the 1970s, 99 of 100 business travelers were men. It's no wonder, then, that as women enter the workplace at higher levels, new ways of relating are emerging.

Lisa Mainiero, Ph.D., a management consultant and professor of management, began researching women in the workplace several years ago. She found tons of material on career entry and advancement. But "what women really wanted to know was whether they should be dating the good-looking man in their office. It's as if they were saying, 'Now that we're here, let's look around.' "

Old codes of conduct have become as dated as the slide rule. The 1950s black-and-white snapshot of identically attired young male executives sitting behind rectangular desks, forming a work force that was easily defined and contained, has been replaced by an interactive, full-color CD-ROM graphic of diverse employee teams working in offices without walls.

The gender revolution in the workplace has mirrored a shift in gender roles at home. Being economic partners on equal footing, and sharing similar work loads and job demands, brings interdependence to marriages. It takes the pressure off men to be the sole providers and gives women more rights and respect.

LOVE IN A CORPORATE CLIMATE