Dating | Weddings

Office Romance

Work may be a four letter word, but the wonderful thing about it is that as well as bringing home your pay, you may end up bringing home a husband.

You have a very high chance of meeting your partner at work and as a result you need to make sure that you spend some time honing your pulling skills.

Why does work work?

Remember when you were at school and boyfriends were two a penny? It seemed that the supply was endless and you only had to open the door to the library and you could fall over a new romance. Well, that was because you got the chance to know people; all right, those exchanges might have been as deep as finding out that they listened to soft rock in their bedrooms while weight training, but you also got to see them borrow pencils in maths or burn sausages in home economics class. They way that we live now, we are meant to discern everything about a possible partner in less than five minutes in a crowded bar and decide if they are a love match. Work takes you back to a place where not every exchange is loaded with pressure and an attraction can slowly build. And there's nothing more exciting when you finally confirm the fact that both you seem to making fifteen coffees a day at exactly the same time for exactly the same reason.

Strategies for getting down to business

The best way to think about an office romance is in business terms: as well as a fertile breeding ground for crushes, this is also the place where you make the magic beans that pay the gas bill. So make sure that if you lose one, you don't end up losing the other. That would be a disaster for your confidence on more levels than you even want to contemplate.

Who is he?

If you are new to a position, don't dive in with someone immediately; it could turn out that he is the office shag-hound and you might end up feeling very stupid when you finally get to know him. If it's right, he'll still be working two desks over from you in a few months time. If he is the post boy and you are the MD, be careful that you don't get slapped with a sexual harassment suit; many a broken heart has flounced off to tell the powers that be all their wounded stories. By the same token, if your target is your boss, then he might want to make you conveniently disappear post-romance: hard to imagine in the fluffy pink love bubble you first feel, but there is an extra dynamic to this particular fluffiness. Also be real about your expectations: disappointed that a post boy's salary doesn't even match your expense account? The boss that screams at subordinates is likely to become all sugary smiles and foot rubs after six? I doubt it.

Conduct yourself accordingly

Don't cover his computer screen in love notes, email pictures of yourself naked (those kids in IT can access your personal mail, whatever they say.) and don't use group discussions to bring up personal issues ('Oh, making everyone tea, are we? You can barely find the cups at home.'). Don't tell his assistant how he failed to call when he said he would or try and sneak a look at his diary. Most of us, and especially men, need some time out from our most intense personal relationships and you will need to be even more professional around them at work than normal, to keep the pressure down. This will also have the benefit of making you seem unavailable and tempting even if you are normally a clingy stalker in all your other relationships.

Prepare for ups and downs

People will accuse you of favouritism, excessive ambition, using up all the milk, anything you can think of (and plenty of things you won't have anticipated). Office romances can push a lot of other people's buttons so you just need to ride it out until the gossips have tired of it. Just don't fuel the fire by giving up your dates at the water cooler if you want your romance, and your reputation, to last.


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