From nine to five, she’s the most important person in your life. The woman you exchange knowing looks with when Mitch from Marketing snores during the meeting or freak out to after you hit “Reply All” on a particularly humiliating e-mail.
One of You Ought to Be Married in Real Life
The logic of this one is obvious. If both of you are actively prowling for love, you may well find it. Together. In the stairwell. Or perhaps at one of those superweird office shindigs. This will effect the permanent deterioration of the work marriage and the possible beginning of an office romance—which is an entirely different kettle of grenades.
Of course, a work marriage may float along on a cloud of harmless attraction. Go ahead, partake in some innocent flirting. Enjoy the company, the physical proximity—the scent, even—of a sexually attractive companion. But remember that the prime directive of the work marriage is to bolster stability and comfort in the workplace. Not to introduce chaos.
One of You Should Be Actively Single
What’s more fun to talk about than bad dates, sordid sex, and romantic turmoil? They provide hours of distracting conversational fodder. The smug married gets to live vicariously, to offer sage advice, and to feel primly superior. The singleton—dying to tell someone, anyone, about last night’s exploits involving nine picklebacks, a police chase, and a 22-year-old bartender—has an eager sounding board.
I’m Down with Same-Sex Work Marriages, But They Can Sometimes Be Fraught
Whatever kind of work marriage floats your work boat is A-OK by me. But in my experience, people of opposite genders tend to be a smidge less competitive with each other. They get into fewer pissing matches and spend less time silently comparing shoes.
That said, the most adorable work marriage I’ve ever seen up close paired two straight, married dudes in their fifties. They nagged each other like an elderly couple in a nursing home. And they did it with love. Work soul mates come in all sorts of unlikely packages. It’s God’s way.
Polygamous Work Marriages Are Also a Potentially Complicated Dealie
You may look across the conference table at that happy work marriage between Bob and Sarah and think, “Hey, why don’t I just horn in on that?” Again, I do not judge. Work bigamy could be your cup of tea.
But my general feeling is that every work three-way will end in tears. Jealousy will inevitably blossom the very first time two of you take a cigarette break and leave the third wheel behind. And what if two of you find that you desperately need to gossip about the other member of your troika? Could get awwwkward.
There is, however, a polygamous work sitch that I endorse. I call it the work harem. One man—happily married at home—may be capable of juggling a bevy of work sister-wives at the office. The key is that there are so many wives, it becomes difficult and confusing for any of them to sustain resentment toward any of the others. It is a blur of work fealty. True, the work sultan’s attentions are spread quite thin. But he has plenty of work love to go around. And he is never without a companion when the fire alarm goes off and everyone has to loiter on the curb outside the lobby.
This arrangement works equally well with a “queen bee” structure, in which one lady maintains a buzzing hive of worker-bee dudes. The work boy toys are at her beck and call. They will leap at her command to refill the toner cartridge or to bring her some peanut M&M’s from the snack machine. Each knows his role. The hive is productive.
Never Marry Down (on the Org Chart)
One of the central joys of the work marriage is the abundant opportunity it provides to bitch about co-workers. This is, however, best accomplished when both work spouses exist on a similar organizational plane. They may happily bitch upward about their superiors or bitch downward about their lackeys.
But problems arise when one work spouse outranks the other. Caution may intrude, for instance, on the urge to speak bitchery to power. What if that smarmy manager you despise happens to be an ally of your recently promoted work wife? What if that shiftless underling turns out to be best bros with your less ambitious work husband? A work marriage is most likely to thrive when it is a partnership of equals.
When at Last It Comes Time to Work Woo, Pull Out All the Stops
My work ex-wife had departed, her cubicle left bare. On pins and needles, I awaited the arrival of her replacement hire.
She seemed promising. Ring on her finger, two kids at home. Could be an ideal match. But she rebuffed my day-one offer to walk out for coffee.
I am by no means deterred. And so, little by little, I have been laying the foundation for caring, devoted work matrimony. I am attentive but not too attentive. I hover near her at beer Fridays, not smothering, but prepared to swoop in if the weirdo from Sales starts talking her ear off. I think she notices. Once, she asked me to hand her the bottle opener. I suavely informed her it was a twist-off. This is how it starts.
byeth Stevenson is the author of Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World.
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