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<\/p>\nDear AAPAAN: I am involved in an office romance. Some of my friends warn me that mixing work and romance will be trouble. What’s your perspective?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Anonymous<\/p>\n
Dear Anonymous<\/p>\n
Your friends are giving you good advice.\u00a0\u00a0Romance alone is challenging enough and when you mix in office and work issues you have a heightened risk for major problems.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start with two extremely risky scenarios.\u00a0\u00a0One is having affairs with or among married people, and second, having romantic relationships between supervisors and subordinates.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Some companies have HR policies\/rules governing romantic relationships and in particular rules prohibiting\/discouraging such relationships between supervisor and subordinates.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, studies of office romances have pointed to complications with 1) unfair perceptions (men do it for love and women do it for power access), 2) poisoned office environments in case of a breakup, 3) awkwardness from couples failing to separate personal from professional lives,\u00a0\u00a04) perceived professional favoritism (or persecution), and 5) potential accusations of sexual harassment.<\/p>\n
As discussed in our prior Dear AAPAAN Blog post, it\u2019s hard finding that \u201cideal\u201d life partner.\u00a0\u00a0If you happened to come across that potential person in your office, it might be difficult to pass up despite the dangers.<\/p>\n
Certainly there\u2019s a potential for serious problems.\u00a0\u00a0But I have seen some successful romances and they depended on favorable circumstances and the couples\u2019 ability to be completely discrete and keep their personal lives out of the office.\u00a0\u00a0I recalled instances where several intra-company couples were so discrete, it was not generally known they were married.<\/p>\n
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An intra-office romance\/marriage need not be all negatives.\u00a0\u00a0There are some pluses.\u00a0\u00a0One is that since you both work in the same professional environment, you become very familiar and empathetic to each other\u2019s job pressures and stresses.\u00a0\u00a0Another plus is that some companies will help you manage career-pathing and relocations.<\/p>\n
If you are an up and coming young professional, there\u2019s a good chance that during your career you will be offered various jobs with increasing responsibility and in different locations (including International).\u00a0\u00a0If your spouse is also a professional and has similar potentials and ambition, you will sooner or later run into the problem that one of you will get that great job offer but which may hurt the career prospects of the other partner.\u00a0\u00a0If you worked for the same company, they may make an effort to move both of you together into good jobs.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019ve seen companies do a lot to make that happen if they really like each employee. I recognize that today, with frequent job hopping from company to company, this scenario might not even apply to you, but who knows.<\/p>\n
Offsetting the above plus is the heightened risk of concurrent job loss.\u00a0\u00a0If your company reorganizes and lays off employees (or worse the company goes under) there\u2019s a chance both of you might be simultaneously jobless.\u00a0\u00a0If you work for different companies then at least one of you might still be employed if one company downsizes.<\/p>\n
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In conclusion, office romances have some very big potentially dangerous pitfalls.\u00a0\u00a0But the heart sometimes wants what the heart wants, and an office romance just might work out.\u00a0\u00a0Just be extremely discrete, careful and avoid the traps.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Good luck!<\/p>\n
Happy Valentine\u2019s Day!<\/p>\n
Wee<\/p>\n
Some Actual Stories<\/strong><\/p>\n 1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A professional single couple worked in the same business unit in an open floor work environment.\u00a0\u00a0There were many young peers working around them.\u00a0\u00a0The relationship seemed to have gone well until a split where one party started dating another coworker.\u00a0\u00a0Even without any open arguments, it became extremely uncomfortable all around because everyone knew what was happening.\u00a0\u00a0And it affected their work adversely.\u00a0\u00a0Unfortunately, Management didn\u2019t know and during an organizational realignment, the former couple ended up sitting next to each other.\u00a0\u00a0Awkward!\u00a0\u00a0Eventually Management was made aware of the problem and they had to be moved to other jobs.<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A married male execute engaged in an affair with a lower level younger female professional in the same division but it was not a direct supervisor and subordinate relationship.\u00a0Their explicitly amorous emails (office email no less) somehow became public.\u00a0\u00a0The executive was reprimanded and eventually left the company.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Two young Asian American employees found romance at work.\u00a0\u00a0Fortunately, they were in different departments and had no work interactions initially.\u00a0\u00a0But later they were moved into the same group working in the open floor but in different subunits so they still had very limited interactions.\u00a0\u00a0Management career planning linked the two since they requested that any relocation should somehow be coordinated so they can be moved together (because they were engaged).\u00a0\u00a0Eventually, they got married and moved together to another city but in different departments.\u00a0\u00a0The timing for developmental steps in their careers was suboptimal because of the need to coordinate their respective moves.\u00a0\u00a0One eventually quit for an opportunity at another city but in a totally different industry.\u00a0\u00a0The company again relocated the other to that city because they really wanted to keep her in the company.\u00a0\u00a0Unfortunately despite the company\u2019s best efforts to accommodate, they both eventually left the company for career choice reasons.<\/p>\n 4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A company moved a high powered executive couple through two international and two domestic relocations into increasing high profile parallel jobs.\u00a0\u00a0It was amazing what management could do if they really wanted to!\u00a0\u00a0If it was not an intra-company couple, the company wouldn\u2019t do anything for the nonemployee spouse.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s your problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear AAPAAN: I am involved in an office romance. Some of my friends warn me that mixing work and romance will be trouble. What’s your perspective?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Anonymous Dear Anonymous Your friends are giving you good advice.\u00a0\u00a0Romance alone is challenging enough and when you mix in office and work issues you have a heightened risk for major […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career","category-other"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/aig.uvaalumni.org\/dearaapaan\/files\/2018\/02\/gameover.jpg\")
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