Office Affairs on the Rise

Office affairs are so common, Glamour Magazine and www.lawyers.com sponsored a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive®. According to the survey results, 41 percent of employed Americans ages 25 to 40 admitted to having engaged in an office romance. And an overwhelming majority (76 percent) believe that office affairs are on the rise. 

“Office affairs are tricky. Some companies forbid it. But the truth is, many people spend more time at work than at home,” said Wish. “The excitement of working together on a project and being successful at it, produces pleasure brain chemicals – endorphins – that can trick the person into feeling emotionally closer to their colleague than they would feel if they met the person out of the work environment.”   

But troubles arise when coworkers mistake or confuse that emotional closeness with true emotional closeness. “An increase in emotional intensity begins to feel like emotional intimacy. It is a general truth that intense emotional experiences bring people together. Survivors of plane crashes, floods and natural disasters often form a camaraderie around the experience, one that may have never happened under different circumstances. All intense experiences produce intimacy. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that it leads to emotional love,” Wish said.   

For like an incubator, the office is often a closed environment that keeps out the outside world. If the relationship were to take the next step, it would mean integrating that person into the other person’s whole life. And that isn’t so easy, says Tessina, because the lure of the relationship in the first place is the fact that it is separate and apart from the rest of one’s life. And provides something that one believes can only be gleaned from the work environment.    

“It gets very easy to slide down that slope. All affairs are not sleazy, negative things when they start. It may be a lovely, healthy connection between you and the other person, but the fact that you are betraying someone else turns it dark,” added Tessina.
   

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Click here for tips on how to avoid an office affair.

Click here for tips on how to end an office affair.

Click here for more stories on infidelity and related topics.

Lenore Skomal is author of nine books and columnist of an award-winning weekly column in the Erie, Pa., Times-News, she also teaches college journalism in Pennsylvania.