Love at Work

How to get away with an office romance. The potential for abuse isn't the only reason companies discourage office affairs, says Judith Sills, Ph.D.

Freud himself identified the two great arenas of human enterprise as Love and Work. But love at work is apparently considerably less great, at least in the mind of your boss. Across nearly every industry and organization, corporate will has attempted to stem the flood of affection—frowning, legislating, transferring, firing, and handbook holding against its inevitable tide. Why?

Three things really bother the work world: the potential for abuse, the potential for alliance, and (worst of all?) the potential for distraction. All three threaten the bottom line.

Abuse has rightly received the bulk of the effort to contain the human sexual impulse in the workplace. Potential abuse of power basically comes back to that age-old sexual question: Who gets to be on top? And how does that impact the person on the bottom? In the classic, corporate sexual position, he's on top, she reports in, and the question always lingers—did he use his strength to nudge her into place beneath him? And, once there, mightn't the pleasures she renders make an "objective annual review" something of a mockery?

Many may ultimately marry the boss, but the organization squirms until the ring is on the finger. Still, even where the possibility of exploitation is eliminated, discomfort with office dating is not. Even in the absence of formally stated policy, when the guy from Accounting and the woman who leads the New Products team start sleeping together, all of Accounting and Marketing (plus some of Sales, half of HR, and a few Production people who spend time on the other side) notice and react.

That reaction is not all negative. We pay attention because even vicarious romance is emotionally arousing in the way that the Frobisher account is not. But mild excitement might be an irritant to a boss who is, in her mind, paying an hour's pay for an hour's work. That hour did not include longing glances or the covert giggles of those who observe them.

Too, we pay attention because a new relationship alters office politics, and that might impact us personally. Two coworkers who become a couple immediately shift the power balance on the R&D team. These two have the potential to be a voting bloc or to act as an axis of support for one another. Strong friendships offer the same possibility of political alliance, but sexual liaisons are particularly adhesive—another reason bosses discourage them.

Further, in the family of the workplace, sexuality between allied employees is metaphoric incest. People who observe the relationship wriggle a little at the boundary violations suggested by love at the office.