The Trouble with Office Romance Isn't Love. It's Everything Else.
Friday, July 24, 2026.
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
Dear Monica,
You ask a deceptively simple question.
After watching the Netflix film Office Romance, and seeing recent discussions in HR Magazine, People Management, RM Magazine, LinkedIn, and Forbes, you wondered whether workplace romance is ultimately a good idea.
Given how many people meet their partners at work—and how many organizations now have policies governing these relationships—you asked for my perspective.
You're not looking for personal advice, only an opinion.
So here's mine.
I think workplace romance is one of those ideas that sounds better in the first act than it often does in the third.
That's not because people shouldn't fall in love. Quite the opposite.
Falling in love is one of life's great adventures. It's just that the workplace is a peculiar place to conduct one.
For most of history, people met where they worked.
Villages were small. Farms, shops, and trades naturally brought people together. If the blacksmith married the miller's daughter, there weren't many alternative introductions waiting on a dating app.
Today's workplace is something else entirely.
It isn't a village.
It isn't a family, despite the occasional corporate slogan insisting that it is.
It's an economic relationship built on performance, evaluation, ambition, accountability, and, if we're honest, a fair amount of competition.
People are promoted, criticized, rewarded, reorganized, and sometimes dismissed. Romance introduces an entirely different emotional system into an environment that depends on objectivity.
That combination deserves more respect than it usually gets.
It's hardly surprising that coworkers become attracted to one another.
We spend enormous amounts of time together. We watch one another solve problems, navigate pressure, recover from mistakes, celebrate victories, and occasionally rescue the office printer from whatever existential crisis it's having that day.
Competence is attractive. Kindness under pressure is attractive. Shared experience is attractive.
Psychologists have understood this for decades.
One of the oldest findings in social psychology is known as the mere exposure effect.
Simply seeing someone repeatedly tends to increase our affection for them. Familiarity breeds comfort. Comfort often becomes attraction.
Notice what the research does not say.
It doesn't say familiarity predicts compatibility.
Those are very different things.
The person sitting across the conference table may become deeply familiar simply because your lives overlap eight or ten hours a day.
Familiarity can feel remarkably like destiny, especially when deadlines, victories, frustrations, and inside jokes accumulate over months or years.
But proximity is not a personality trait.
And convenience is not a character strength.
Research on workplace romance paints a more complicated picture than either romantics or Human Resources would probably prefer.
Couples involved in workplace relationships often report greater job satisfaction and higher engagement while the relationship is thriving.
That makes perfect sense. Most of us enjoy going to work when someone is genuinely happy to see us.
Organizations, however, don't experience only the honeymoon.
They experience the entire life cycle.
Studies have also linked workplace romances to perceptions of favoritism, conflicts of interest, reduced team cohesion, and increased stress when relationships end. Even when a couple behaves impeccably, coworkers naturally begin asking questions.
Was that promotion earned?
Is that criticism objective?
Are they discussing next quarter's budget—or last night's argument?
The fascinating part is that these questions don't require misconduct to become influential.
Human beings are exquisitely sensitive to fairness. Once ambiguity enters the room, people begin filling in the blanks, and they're often remarkably creative.
As a marriage and family therapist, my concern isn't primarily ethical.
It's psychological.
Healthy relationships require enough space for two partners to remain distinct individuals.
The modern workplace often does the opposite.
Couples may share projects, deadlines, office politics, lunch breaks, professional networks, and eventually the same emotional weather. That's an extraordinary amount of overlap.
Sometimes it deepens a relationship.
Sometimes it quietly erodes it.
One disappointment suddenly has two addresses.
One conflict follows you home—and then follows you back to work the next morning.
There is another issue which has emerged from neuroscience that receives surprisingly little attention.
Romantic love temporarily changes how we evaluate risk.
Employees who are ordinarily thoughtful begin making decisions with breathtaking optimism.
We assume our relationship will be the exception. We imagine we'll remain professional if things end. We tell ourselves that everyone else struggled because they lacked maturity.
Psychologists have a name for this tendency: optimism bias. Most of us believe unpleasant outcomes are more likely to happen to other people than to ourselves.
It's one of the mind's more charming illusions.
And one of its more expensive ones.
Can workplace romances succeed?
Absolutely.
Many have led to wonderful marriages.
But success stories don't eliminate risk. They simply remind us that risk isn't destiny.
Personally, I think we ask the wrong question.
Instead of asking whether workplace romance can work, perhaps we should ask whether it's wise to intertwine two of the most important parts of our lives—our emotional well-being and our livelihood—when each is complicated enough on its own.
There are many places to meet someone extraordinary.
There is only one place where you earn your professional reputation.
I realize that this may be an unpopular opinion, but for me, that's a distinction worth protecting.
Thank you, Monica, for sharing my articles.
You raise a fair and enduring question—not simply about romance, but about the curious way human beings mistake what is familiar for what is fated.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Forbes Advisor. (2026, July 1). Workplace romance statistics. Forbes.
Pierce, C. A., Byrne, D., & Aguinis, H. (1996). Attraction in organizations: A model of workplace romance. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 17(1), 5–32. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-1379(199601)17:1<5::AID-JOB737>3.0.CO;2-J
Powell, G. N. (Ed.). (2001). Workplace romances: An organizational and interpersonal perspective. Psychology Press.
Quinn, R. E. (1977). Coping with Cupid: The formation, impact, and management of dating relationships in organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 22(1), 30–45. https://doi.org/10.2307/2391745
Society for Human Resource Management. (2026, February 11). Shhh... It's a secret. SHRM's annual research finds most employees keep workplace romances private.
Society for Human Resource Management. (2023, February 7). New SHRM survey: Workplace romance 2023.