Many Affairs Begin With Admiration, Not Attraction

Wednesday, June 3, 2026.

Why modern work has become a rival to marriage—and what that reveals about attention, intimacy, and the architecture of modern life.

Some partners now receive more admiration from Microsoft Teams than from their spouse.

That sounds ridiculous until you think about it for thirty seconds.

Modern work has become one of the last places adults are routinely praised, recognized, challenged, consulted, and noticed.

Marriage, meanwhile, increasingly manages the administrative debris of life: schedules, bills, aging parents, school pickups, insurance forms, grocery lists, and the mysterious disappearance of every charging cable ever manufactured.

Work asks for your ideas.

Marriage often asks where you put the scissors.

Both are necessary.

Only one reliably feels flattering.

We talk about workplace affairs as though they begin with attraction.

Many begin with admiration.

I have become increasingly persuaded that we misunderstand where many relationship crises actually start. We assume the danger arrives when someone develops romantic feelings for a colleague. By then, the process is often well underway.

Something more subtle usually happens first.

Attention moves.

Admiration moves.

Curiosity moves.

And eventually, emotional gravity moves with them.

If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. Many couples think they are dealing with attraction when they are actually dealing with a migration of attention.

And attention, more than attraction, is often the hidden variable.

Work Didn't Change. But Its Emotional Role Did.

For most of human history, work was primarily about survival.

You farmed.

You hunted.

You traded.

You built.

You repaired.

Work mattered, but it was not expected to satisfy your emotional life.

That responsibility belonged elsewhere.

Family provided belonging.

Religion provided meaning.

Communities provided identity.

Neighborhoods provided familiarity.

Extended families provided continuity.

Friendships provided companionship.

The emotional burden of being human was distributed across many institutions.

Then something happened.

Many of those institutions weakened at the same time.

Church attendance declined.

Civic organizations shrank.

Neighborhood life thinned.

Extended families dispersed.

Community became increasingly optional.

The village didn't disappear entirely.

It just became harder to find.

Meanwhile, work expanded.

Work became the place where people found purpose.

Growth.

Status.

Recognition.

Identity.

Belonging.

Meaning.

A future.

The modern workplace quietly absorbed emotional functions once spread across entire communities.

The result is that many workplaces now operate as something previous generations would immediately recognize but never call a job:

An attachment system.

Institutional Intimacy

Institutional intimacy occurs when an organization begins providing emotional functions that historically belonged to personal relationships.

Most organizations never intended this.

Effects rarely ask permission from intentions.

Think about what a successful workplace offers.

People who notice your contributions.

People who seek your expertise.

People who celebrate your achievements.

People who recognize your growth.

People who tell you that your work matters.

People who express appreciation.

People who depend on you.

People who listen.

For many folks, these experiences are becoming increasingly rare elsewhere.

At home, conversations often revolve around logistics.

• Who is driving whom?

• Who paid what?

• Who scheduled the appointment?

• Who forgot the permission slip?

Who left the object in the refrigerator that now appears to be developing its own legal identity?

These conversations are unavoidable.

But they are not especially admiring.

The consequence is that work increasingly becomes the place where people feel most competent, most valued, and most alive.

That shift matters.

Because human beings become attached to environments that make them feel psychologically visible.

Human Beings Migrate Toward Admiration

One of the least appreciated truths about relationships is that people move toward environments where they feel valued.

Not always because they're narcissists.

But because they're human.

Love matters enormously.

But admiration may matter more than most couples realize.

Admiration says:

"I see what is remarkable about you."

That experience nourishes something deep.

In long-term relationships, admiration often fades not because affection disappears but because familiarity takes over.

Partners stop noticing what once impressed them.

The sacrifices become expected.

The strengths become assumed.

The effort becomes invisible.

The person becomes familiar.

And familiarity, if left unattended, can quietly become a thief.

Work, meanwhile, keeps noticing.

Work measures performance.

Work provides feedback.

Work celebrates milestones.

Work acknowledges effort.

The annual review may not be romance, but it is attention.

And attention is never psychologically neutral.

The currency of intimacy is attention.

Organizations understand this.

Social media understands this.

Artificial intelligence understands this.

Many couples do not.

A Reflection Before We Go Further

Most partners assume relationships deteriorate because love disappears.

In my experience, that is not usually what happens.

More often, attention gets redistributed.

A partner starts feeling more alive somewhere else.

More appreciated somewhere else.

More understood somewhere else.

The relationship is not necessarily abandoned.

It is simply no longer receiving the best parts of someone's attention.

That distinction matters.

Because attention can be redirected.

But only after it is noticed.

Admiration Migration

Most workplace affairs are explained as stories of attraction.

I think many are actually stories of admiration.

I call this admiration migration.

Admiration migration occurs when appreciation, curiosity, emotional investment, and attention gradually move away from a primary relationship and toward another person or environment.

Notice what is missing from that definition.

Sex.

That omission is deliberate.

By the time many workplace relationships become sexual, the more important movement has already occurred.

Attention has migrated.

Consider a few questions.

Who hears your good news first?

Who receives your frustrations first?

Who understands your disappointments?

Who gets your enthusiasm?

Who receives your curiosity?

Who gets the most animated version of you?

The answers often reveal more than discussions about fidelity ever could.

Because intimacy is built from repeated acts of attention.

And attention tends to flow toward admiration.

The Competence Problem

Workplace attachments often emerge between highly capable people.

This is not accidental.

Competence is psychologically attractive.

Two physicians understand medicine.

Two entrepreneurs understand risk.

Two teachers understand exhaustion.

Two therapists understand emotional labor.

Two executives understand responsibility.

Shared competence creates recognition.

The colleague doesn't simply understand what you do.

They understand what it costs.

That recognition can feel profoundly intimate.

Particularly when recognition has become scarce at home.

Many affairs begin not because someone found another human being attractive.

They begin because someone finally felt understood.

The distinction matters. Context is king.

Marriage Encounters the Whole, Entire Partner

There is another reason work can become emotionally seductive.

Work encounters the edited version of you.

Marriage encounters the complete version.

Coworkers see your competence.

Spouses see your competence and your occasional absurdity.

Coworkers see your confidence.

Spouses see your confidence and your insecurity.

Coworkers see your polished presentation.

Spouses see the forty-five minutes you spent arguing with a printer.

Coworkers see achievement.

Spouses see the entire operating system.

Marriage has always involved this asymmetry.

The problem is not that spouses know too much.

The problem is that people sometimes compare a fully revealed spouse to a partially revealed colleague.

That comparison is impossible.

The coworker gets your best hours.

The spouse gets your remaining hours.

The coworker receives your ambition.

The spouse receives your depletion.

The coworker receives your alertness.

The spouse receives your fatigue.

Over time, what appears to be a romantic problem often turns out to be an attentional problem.

The Burden We Placed on Marriage

The twentieth century asked marriage to become our best friend.

The twenty-first century is asking it to become our best friend, therapist, co-parent, financial partner, travel companion, sexual partner, emotional regulator, and primary source of meaning.

Then we act surprised when the arrangement occasionally looks exhausted.

Marriage has not necessarily become weaker.

Its job description has become impossible.

Many couples are attempting to extract an entire community's worth of emotional resources from a single relationship.

That is a tremendous amount of pressure for any institution.

Even love.

The Next Competitor Is Already Here

The workplace is not competing with marriage because it contains attractive coworkers.

It is competing with marriage because it delivers attention.

Which raises an uncomfortable question.

What happens when other systems become equally capable of delivering attention?

Artificial intelligence is beginning to answer that question.

AI companions can provide conversation.

Responsiveness.

Memory.

Availability.

Encouragement.

Curiosity.

Many life partners already report feeling emotionally understood by artificial intelligence.

This development is less surprising than it appears.

Human beings are drawn toward whatever reliably notices them.

Historically that was family.

Then community.

Increasingly it is work.

Tomorrow it may be technology.

The common denominator is not attraction.

The common denominator is a witness.

In other words, Most folks just need to feel seen.

What Couples Are Actually Fighting About

Many couples arrive in therapy believing they are fighting about communication.

Or sex.

Or chores.

Or schedules.

Frequently they are fighting about attention.

One partner feels invisible.

The other feels unappreciated.

Both begin investing elsewhere.

Work.

Phones.

Politics.

Children.

Social media.

Hobbies.

Artificial intelligence.

Anything capable of providing immediate psychological rewards.

This process is rarely dramatic.

It is usually incremental.

A thousand small reallocations of attention.

Then one day someone says:

"I don't know what happened."

But something did happen. Obviously. Let’s have the courage to name it.

Attention drifted.

Admiration migrated.

Curiosity diminished.

The relationship became increasingly administrative and devitalized..

Nobody intended it.

Yet there it is.

The Great Relationship Challenge of the Twenty-First Century

The workplace affair is merely the most visible and convenient form of admiration migration.

The larger story is that modern life has created dozens of competitors for our attention and very few structures that help us direct it intentionally.

Relationships do not survive because love exists.

They survive because attention remains loyal.

And in a culture where attention is bought, sold, measured, harvested, monetized, and endlessly redirected, loyalty may increasingly be an attentional achievement rather than a romantic feeling.

The great relationship challenge of the twenty-first century may not be infidelity.

It may be attention allocation.

Every institution in modern life wants more of your attention than your relationship can afford to lose.

Employers want it.

Algorithms want it.

Social media wants it.

Artificial intelligence wants it.

The question couples increasingly face is not whether they love each other.

The question is whether they can continue choosing each other in an economy designed to monetize distraction.

Many marriages are not dying from conflict.

They are dying from competition.

Competition from institutions that have become remarkably good at delivering admiration, validation, novelty, stimulation, and attention.

The workplace affair is not the disease.

It is often the symptom.

The deeper issue is that modern life has created powerful alternative attachment systems, and many couples have not yet recognized that they are competing against them.

This pattern usually escalates.

Most couples wait too long because the system temporarily stabilizes.

Insight is not interruption.

Understanding the pattern is not the same as interrupting the pattern.

Some relationships are no longer suffering from misunderstanding.

They are suffering from repetition.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is admiration really more important than love?

Love and admiration are deeply connected, but they are not identical. Many struggling couples still love each other. What has often disappeared is active appreciation, curiosity, and respect. Admiration helps partners continue seeing each other as valuable rather than merely familiar.

What is admiration migration?

Admiration migration occurs when appreciation, attention, emotional energy, and curiosity gradually shift away from a primary relationship and toward another person, workplace, hobby, community, or attachment figure.

Are workplace friendships dangerous?

Most workplace friendships are healthy and beneficial. The problem is not friendship. The problem is emotional displacement, secrecy, or situations where a colleague increasingly becomes the primary recipient of attention, validation, and emotional intimacy.

Why do workplace affairs happen so often?

Many workplaces create ideal conditions for emotional bonding: shared goals, shared stress, mutual admiration, competence, novelty, and frequent interaction. Those conditions naturally foster attachment.

Can AI become an emotional competitor to a relationship?

Increasingly, yes. AI systems can provide responsiveness, memory, attention, and emotional engagement. While they are not human relationships, they can satisfy some of the same psychological needs that humans seek in intimate connections.

When Reading About Relationships Isn't Enough

My readers often arrive here the way most of us arrive anywhere on the internet: trying to understand something that has become difficult to explain.

Sometimes insight is enough.

Often it isn't.

Understanding why admiration migrated is not the same thing as interrupting the process. Understanding why attention drifted is not the same thing as bringing it home.

If you are finding your relationship caught in one of these patterns, my work focuses on science-based couples therapy intensives designed to help couples identify and interrupt entrenched cycles quickly.

When a relationship has become too important, too painful, or too repetitive for ordinary weekly conversations to create movement, a structured intensive can often accomplish what months of incremental effort cannot.

Some couples do not need more information.

They need a place where the pattern can no longer hide.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (2015). The seven principles for making marriage work (Revised ed.). Harmony Books.

Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon & Schuster.

Rusbult, C. E. (1980). Commitment and satisfaction in romantic associations: A test of the investment model. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 16(2), 172–186.

Perel, E. (2017). The state of affairs: Rethinking infidelity. Harper.

Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books.