办公室的恋情

Doctor Robi Ludwig is a psychotherapist. Steve Santagati is an author, Good to see both of you.

Thank you!

Now there're according to a vaulting 1 corporate 2 career...career information website, 58% of employees say they had an office romance, that's up from 46% in 2003 . So why are more people having office romances?

There are more women in the workplace. It is really the modern day dating service. You have a lot of opportunity to work. A lot of people work so much, they don't have time to socialize. So you are gonna look around at the good-looking people around you and say hey. You have a lot of possibilities.

So what are the drawbacks, though?

The drawbacks though, obviously if it begets 3 complicated and everybody knows, and that's the big thing at the beginning of an office romance, you wanna really keep it quiet.

When it ends people can get vicious. And so then you have a different memory about how the relationship started. That's when sexual harassment 4 charges can take place. That's why companies get so upset.

Yeah, but if you don't want to start / right away. . . the thing, the thing is, look,

Start right away what?

No, start right away and what(inaudible),

What're you starting yet?

She's getting you!

(Inaudible)

You wanna, you wannaYou wanna make su(re). . . Well, you don't start dating somebody at work if you think he or she is gonna set a sexual harassment case against you.

But how do you know?

But probably you don't know it's no because people can get vengeful and even violent in worst case scenarios 6.

Yeah. But an office , an office roman(ce ). . yeah, they can get violent?

They can get violent.

Man, where are you working?

(inaudible)

I used to work in a psych(o)-hospital, so don't ask me.

You are working on a oil rig, ok?

The thing is that you want, the nice thing about an office romance is a lot of romances , a lot of relationships happen really quickly. But because of the mystery and you have to be really quiet about it, the relationship will actually take a little bit longer to begin and unfold.

There's some truth that you do get a sense of who you are dating because you get(because you've already seen them), you get to see them, you get to know them as a person, you get to see how they think and how they operate, and, and in a lot of cases, you are with people who have similar values, and similar mindsets which is why according to many surveys, a lot of these relationships end up turning into long term relationships and even marriage.

In fact you're speaking from experience.

That's right. I married my husband and we met at work and it worked out fine, so.

It makes sense you are spending 40, 50 hours a week at work, (Yeah. Right. ) and even though office romance, or any kind of thing, even if you are dating somebody in your building, for example, it's a bad idea, in general, but if you're gonna do it, you gotta be covert 7 about it.

In my, in my view. . .

(Inaudible), keep it on the down low

You gonna, it's gonna happen. It's natural. There is an older woman that we had, comment, and she said it's chemistry, if you see with someone at work, and no matter where you meet them, you're gonna have to be with them.

It is part of life that you are gonna be attracted to people that you know and you are sharing confidences with. It's just normal.

Are there any, anything you shouldn't do like dating the boss?

No paper trail. . , well, date, don't date the boss.

Yeah. That's why it gets a little bit tricky 8, because then it's very hard to say are you saying "yes" to the person, because they are more powerful than you. Is it hard to say no, because you're afraid of retaliation(Right. ). That's when it gets a little bit tricky, and you have to be smart about it, you have to think about worst case scenario 5 , what's gonna happen if it doesn't work out, and you have to face this person every day. It's gonna be hard to be thought of as professionals . It's gonna be hard to stay at the workplace. What's more important, love or work?

So it sounds there's, there's really no hard and fast rule.

Right. No one size fits all.

Yet, they want. . . No paper trails, don't e-mail each other and don't touch each other in the office and make sure you hang out in areas where no one is gonna see you outside of work, and the office Christmas party is all coming up too. (That's already another story) That's a big, big, big deal, so anybody has been looking at you all year, all of the sudden if. . . .

. . . fluorescent 9 light and set the moonlight, it might be more romantic.

. . . start like . . . but, that's a, don't do it. (yeah) Be accurate.

ok, and for a note that Today Show's Christmas party takes place next week, just in case you want it. Anyway. . . .