Dear Daniel,

I recently watched the Netflix film Office Romance, which made me think about the broader issue of romantic relationships in the workplace.

I've also noticed that several publications—including HR Magazine, People Management, RM Magazine, and LinkedIn—have been discussing workplace relationships, often in the context of real organizations dealing with the benefits and risks of employees dating each other.

In addition, Forbes published workplace romance statistics on July 1, 2026, suggesting that romantic relationships between coworkers remain surprisingly common.

Given all of this attention, I'm curious about your perspective.

Do you think workplace romances are generally a good idea, or do they create more problems than they're worth?

From your experience as a marriage and family therapist, are there psychological dynamics that people—and employers—often overlook?

I'm not seeking personal advice or counseling. I simply thought this would make for an interesting discussion.

Kind regards,

Monica

One day psychology may look back on our era with genuine bewilderment.

Not because we misunderstood depression.

Or anxiety.

Or trauma.

But because we consistently confused biology with morality.

Future generations may find it astonishing that otherwise intelligent folks routinely looked at inherited differences in emotional regulation and concluded they were witnessing differences in virtue.

They may wonder how we could have been so certain.

The answer is surprisingly simple.

Human beings cannot see nervous systems.

We can only see behavior.

Everything else is interpretation.

A therapist sits across from a new client.

It's their second session.

The client has spent ninety minutes describing a lifetime of criticism from her mother.

She leaves the office with a recommendation that will alter the architecture of her family forever:

"Stop speaking to her."

Maybe the therapist is right.

Maybe the mother is genuinely dangerous.

Maybe decades of emotional abuse have made continued contact impossible.

Or maybe...

the therapist has just made one of the most consequential recommendations of a person's life after hearing exactly one witness.

That should give every therapist pause.

Not because estrangement is never appropriate.

It absolutely is.

But because permanent family rupture should never become emotionally routine.

Couples often ask me what intimacy looks like.

They expect a complicated answer.

Neurochemistry.

Attachment Theory.

Trauma histories.

Love languages.

Someone usually mentions eye contact.

No one has ever said,

"Maybe our hearts need to get on the same schedule."

Oddly enough, they may not be entirely wrong.

A fascinating new study published in PNAS Nexus found that when people spend time in close physical proximity, their heart rates begin to synchronize.

The effect was strongest among people who already knew one another—and strongest still when they were physically close and paying attention to the same thing.

Not talking.

Not touching.

Not gazing soulfully into one another's eyes.

Simply sharing attention.

That tiny distinction may tell us something profound about intimacy.

On the morning the box arrived, Emma almost threw it away.

It had come in plain brown paper with no return address, no company logo, no glossy promises that it would revolutionize anything.

The package contained a walnut box no larger than a dictionary, a brass button, and a single folded card.

It read:

Every marriage has two histories.

One is remembered with bestowed attention.

The other is merely lived.

That was all.

Ben turned the box over in his hands.

"Someone's idea of a joke."

Emma shrugged.

"Or marketing."

They placed it on the windowsill beside the basil plant and forgot about it.

Or, how ordinary families won the right to ordinary lives

There is a sentence almost nobody says anymore.

"Thank goodness somebody fought for Saturday."

Perhaps we should.

This weekend, millions of Americans will sleep a little later than usual.

Parents will stand beside soccer fields holding paper cups of coffee.

Grandparents will drift in for dinner. Teenagers will sleep until noon.

Couples will wander through hardware stores arguing amiably over paint colors they don't actually need.

Dogs will be walked a little farther. Pancakes will burn. Someone, somewhere, will decide that today is a perfectly good day to take an afternoon nap.

None of these moments feel historical.

That is history's greatest trick.

Its finest achievements become so ordinary that we stop seeing them altogether.

The weekend is one of those achievements.

It did not arrive with modern life like electricity or indoor plumbing. It was imagined, argued over, marched for, struck for, and, in some cases, died for.

The weekend is not simply two days off.

It is one of the greatest democratic achievements of the modern world.

And because it succeeded so completely, we have forgotten it was ever missing.

There is an empty chair at the kitchen table.

Every marriage has a kitchen table.

It may be made of oak, laminate, or whatever Scandinavian furniture company has convinced us that happiness arrives with an Allen wrench.

It may be covered with unpaid bills, school permission slips, a lonely avocado, and at least one coffee mug that someone swears they're "still using."

More importantly, it is where couples conduct the ordinary business of intimacy.

Who forgot to call the plumber.

Whether your son really needs another pair of soccer cleats.

Why one person seems unusually quiet.

Who is making dinner.

And, every so often, what exactly was meant by the sentence:

"I just think it's interesting."

No marriage has ever survived without becoming fluent in this strange second language.

Couples rarely argue about words. They argue about meanings.

A spouse says one thing. The other hears another. Somewhere between intention and interpretation, an argument is born.

For most of human history, there was only one way to resolve this problem.

There is a young man sitting across from me.

He is twenty-three.

Bright. Funny. Curious.

He can explain cryptocurrency in language I can actually understand. He built his own gaming computer.

He knows more about artificial intelligence than I ever will. He can spend an hour explaining why he should apply for jobs, return his mother's phone calls, finish college, or start exercising.

He has fifteen unfinished job applications on his laptop.

His parents think he's lazy.

He thinks he's failing.

Neither explanation satisfies me anymore.

After years of working with individuals, couples, and families, I've become increasingly skeptical whenever someone says another person "just isn't motivated."

Motivation has become our culture's junk drawer explanation. We throw everything into it because we can't think of anywhere else to put the problem.

Teenager won't study?

Motivation.

Young adult can't launch?

Motivation.

Employee disengaged?

Motivation.

Marriage feels flat?

Motivation.

It is an enormously useful word because it explains almost nothing.

What one of the largest international psychology studies on career choice reveals about social expectations, identity, and the invisible boundaries of human possibility

Most of us like to believe our ambitions are our own.

Ask someone why they became an engineer, a teacher, a therapist, or a physician, and the answer usually arrives with reassuring confidence.

"I've always loved solving problems."

"I've always wanted to help people."

"It just suited my personality."

Perhaps.

But psychology has always asked a slightly more uncomfortable question.

Where did that personality learn what to want?

Not because our choices are illusions.

Not because we are merely products of culture.

But because human beings are social creatures before they are autonomous ones.

There is a comforting fiction that many educated adults carry around like an heirloom.

The fiction is that good people win.

Not eventually. Not spiritually. Literally.

We imagine that kindness attracts partners, honesty builds families, generosity creates loyalty, and manipulative people ultimately sabotage themselves.

The universe, in this view, functions as a sort of cosmic guidance counselor. Character is rewarded. Vice is punished.

It is a beautiful story.

The problem is that history keeps interrupting it.

A recent study published in Evolutionary Psychological Science found that folks who reported higher levels of relational aggression—gossiping, social exclusion, manipulation, jealousy induction, and other forms of covert hostility—were more likely to be in romantic relationships and tended to report having more biological children.

The effect was modest.

But it was real enough to force us to confront a deeply uncomfortable possibility:

What if some behaviors we consider socially undesirable occasionally provide advantages in the competition for mates, status, and family formation?

That question has less to do with morality than most people realize.

And more to do with human nature.

Is Civilization a Thin Veneer Over an Ancient Nervous System?

Most miracles begin in the wrong place.

Not in cathedrals.

Not before kings.

Not in cities important enough to appear in bold print on maps.

This one began because two girls had chores.

By the summer of 1899, Corsica was thirsty.

The island had always known hardship. It knew invasion and poverty. It knew migration and grief.

It knew the fierce loyalties of family life and the long memories of vendetta.

In some parts of Corsica, old injuries were preserved with extraordinary fidelity.

Grievances could become heirlooms. A wrong done to one generation might still shape the emotional landscape of the next.

The "we" often transcended the "I."

Then the rains failed.

In mountain villages like Campitello, drought was not an inconvenience.

It was a threat to survival. Olive groves suffered. Chestnut trees weakened. Springs diminished. Livestock required water that seemed increasingly uncertain.

A wife says her husband is avoidant.

A husband says his wife is anxious.

They have been having the same argument for seven years.

Both are convinced they understand what is happening.

A new study suggests they may each be partly right.

It also suggests they may each be looking through a distorted mirror.

Attachment Theory has become part of everyday language.

Partners diagnose one another over dinner.

Friends discuss attachment styles over coffee. Social media has transformed a once-specialized psychological framework into common cultural currency.

Yet beneath all the labels sits a surprisingly old question:

How well do we really know the person we love?