Office romance is a funny thing. Put together a bunch of men and women for hours on end, five days a week, and some of those men and women are bound to develop feelings for each other. Yet every company’s HR department has all sorts of rules and regulations about dating within the office. Workplace relationships are often seen as taboo. Is it ever okay to date a coworker? If so, how can you make sure that your relationship doesn’t cost you your job?
If you find yourself attracted to a coworker, get your facts straight before you make a move on him or her. Consult your company’s HR guidelines to see what kind of policy they have in place regarding dating coworkers. Whether they have an established set of rules or not, it’s typically a good idea for direct reports and supervisors to avoid dating each other. This means that you shouldn’t date your boss or anyone who considers you to be their immediate boss. Some people would take that rule a step farther and say that you shouldn’t date anyone that reports to anyone under you or anyone who’s directly above your boss. Basically, whether you’re a director who’s fallen for the SVP that your boss, the vice president, reports to, or you’re the SVP in love with the director, your relationship will seem questionable. Your boss (the VP) may feel uncomfortable reprimanding you for fear that his boss, who is also your S.O., will punish him for doing so. Likewise, he might hesitate to promote you for fear it will appear to be favoritism. In a situation like this, if your feelings are deep and you think this relationship has potential, you need to discuss it with the object of your affection, and then one of you should try to find a job elsewhere. At the very least, one of you should attempt to transfer into a different department wherein neither of you will be reporting to each other in any way.
If neither of you reports to each other, you can feel fairly comfortable starting your relationship. Whether you’re in the same department and on the same level, or in different departments on different levels, no one else at the company will have to worry that one of you will be sleeping your way to the top. However, you really need to be sure that the coworker you’re about to ask out shares your feelings. You’re going to have to work together whether they accept your request for a date or not, so you don’t want to experience awkwardness as a result of rejection. Once you’re pretty positive that your coworker is interested in you, confess your feelings and ask them out. If you both feel the first couple of dates go well, you should plan a time to talk to an HR person. Go together and let the HR person know that the two of you have begun a relationship, and you just want to make sure that there won’t be any issues as a result. Then you’ll need to let your other coworkers know. There’s no need to round everyone up and hold a meeting, but you should both feel free to tell a few of the other employees that you’re friends with. Word will get around, but it will be better if you are the ones who started the word in the first place. That way there won’t be room for any bizarre rumors to pop up.
A time may come when your office romance begins to go south. If the two of you ultimately break up, you’ll need to be extra careful about how you act at work. If there’s way too much anger between the two of you, one of you will have to find a job elsewhere. Hopefully, though, you’ll be able to avoid each other in the office as much as possible, and keep any drama out of the workplace. Whether it succeeds or fails, the best way to conduct an on-the-job romance is to be as responsible and open about it as possible. Clearing things with HR and cluing in your other coworkers will relieve a lot of stress, leaving you both more time to enjoy your relationship.
You love your friends. You love your S.O. There’s only one problem—they don’t seem to love each other very much. Sometimes there’s a good reason for the animosity between your boyfriend/girlfriend and your friends, and sometimes they just rub each other the wrong way. What can you do when you’re trapped in the middle? Spending all of your time divided between the two may seem like a solution, but it won’t work. Even if your partner is no where to be seen, that doesn’t mean your friends won’t snag the opportunity to criticize him or her to you. Same thing goes with your friends-free time with your mate. You’ll need to either intervene, or cut someone loose.
If you’re thinking that you’re going to have to choose between your S.O. and your friends, you’ve got a tough decision ahead of you. The first thing you need to consider is the validity of each party’s complaints. What have your friends said they dislike about your partner, and what has your mate commented negatively on about your buddies? Are either of their complaints valid? If your friends hate your boyfriend or girlfriend because he/she has cheated on you repeatedly, then they may have a good point. It might be time to trust your friends’ wisdom and dump your subpar partner, even if you still have a soft spot for them. If their only complaint is that they think he’s annoying or not good looking enough for you, though, your friends might need dumping.
If you feel that sacrificing your friends for your mate– or vice versa— isn’t an option, then you have to figure out how to intervene. You need to decide what you need from each person involved before you can move forward. Do you want your boyfriend or girlfriend to stop mocking your friends when they’re around each other? Do you want your friends to stop openly sulking when your S.O. comes along on a night out? Decide just what you can ignore and what you will no longer put up with. Then talk to everyone involved. Take your partner aside and tell them exactly what you need. Flat out inform him or her that he/she doesn’t need to like your friends, but they should learn how to tolerate them. Make it clear that you’re not going to choose one side over the other, but that you would just like everyone to behave nicely when it’s time to be in the same room. Then take your friends aside and give them their speech. Tell them that your mate is going to be nicer to them, but they have to return the favor. Say that you love your S.O. and your friends way too much to give up on either of them.
Once you’ve had your say, you may be surprised to notice that everyone behaves a little better. If there’s someone who doesn’t, then you really should question how much they care about you. If your boyfriend/girlfriend and friends love you as much as you love them, they’ll make a true effort to help remedy the situation. If they don’t, they’re just not worth it.
Online Dating can be tough these days, especially since you're dealing with strangers who can potentially make up whatever they want. Trust is delicate and should be earned. There are a lot of horror stories that highlight the dangers. Not long ago, a guy used a popular online dating site to meet, drug and rape women! Obviously that's horrible. The guy should rut in prison for life. Apparently he had multiple profiles, where he was a doctor, Astronaut, and even a CIA agent! He was also very charismatic and handsome. Many women thought that they met Mr. Right when they should have ran the other way.
So how do you check someone to make sure that they're genuine? The answer is surprise, surprise, the Internet. These days just about everyone leaves a huge amount of digital foot print. First to determine whether your date is even a real person, ask for some details, and then later on, see if they can reiterate the same thing. This should help you to recover inconsistencies.
You can Google or Facebook their names or email address to gather information. On Facebook, you can see their profile, or at least a friend list. If they have a lot of friends, that's good. If there's only a handful, then it could be a warning sign. They could be 1) just setting up their social networking account, 2) not having many friends, or 3) building a fake account. If you really get serious, you can even hire Internet Background Check companies. But usually require you to know more intimate details about a person. But it could be worth it to gain a piece of mind that the other person is on the level.
Internet dating can help you meet a wide range of prospective dates. Just keep in mind, every once in a while there could be a bad apple out there. Obviously don't treat everyone you date with suspicion and hostility. But instead do what political candidates do when they select a running mate, have a vetting process to uncover any potential pitfalls!
