Lifestyle

Office romance: It’s time to ditch the taboo and lighten up

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Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and you’re none too happy about it. In fact, you wish the whole stinking business would disappear, or that at least the city would announce mandatory jail terms for anyone caught skipping down the sidewalk with a bouquet or gazing tenderly across a table for two.

After all, you’re single, and it seems to be a terminal condition. Attempted setups go nowhere. Your Internet dating forays produced a parade of creeps who fabricated everything except their gender. And your last bar hookup led to a morning-after spent googling “Franciscan monastery.”

So you’ll pass the evening as you did last year, griping over drinks with your pal from work. She’s single too, so she gets it. God knows why — she’s smart, funny, gorgeous. Hell, you’d go for her in a second, if things were different.

OFFICE ROMANCE: JUST SAY NO

But you work together — and everyone knows you don’t date a colleague. Your dad warned you about it when you took your first job. One advice book after another calls it career suicide. Your boss even referenced it when he hired you, saying not to confuse the office with a speed-dating circle. He made a joke out of it, but the message was clear: dating at work is a huge mistake.

Here’s the thing, though. The people who say that are wrong. All of them. And they need to shut up.

Prohibiting dating in the workplace maybe made sense once. Maybe. But if it ever did, it certainly doesn’t anymore. The idea that colleagues can’t and shouldn’t date each other should be stuffed in a time capsule along with the IBM Selectric and the chastity belt.

“It’s so ridiculous,” says Stephanie Losee, who with co-author Helaine Olen set off a media storm several years back with the publication of “Office Mates,” a book pointing out that not only are bans on office dating misguided, but that contrary to the clucking of water-cooler celibates, the workplace is far and away the best place to meet a love interest.

After all, noted the pair — who both married men they met on the job — the office is “the village of the 21st century.” It’s where we spend most of our time, where we meet friends. And it’s where we’re surrounded by a pool of people who share our career interests and are gainfully employed, not spending their days wheezing over a laptop in their parents’ basement, composing online dating profiles that promise the brains of Stephen Hawking in the Situation’s body.

“You’ve got an enormous number of things in common, and everyone’s been vetted,” says Losee. “They really did get that degree from Stanford, because when they were hired it got checked.”

Still, “People are so afraid,” notes Stephen Viscusi, a New York-based headhunter and host of the upcoming A&E show “The Job Whisperer.”

“They meet these perfect people, but they believe in this old wives’ tale that it’s not a healthy thing to do.”

Meanwhile, he adds, “Everyone’s doing it. Why not just admit it and call it what it is — a reality of life.”

Luckily, a growing number of people seem to be getting the memo.

Take Jim Dailakis. He’d long believed dating co-workers was a mistake, so he was conflicted when he found himself falling for one. Friends “thought I was insane,” and when the relationship ended, they were quick with a told-ya-so. He figured it was a one-time aberration, but to his surprise, it happened again. Twice.

When the third relationship ended and he had to reckon with what he’d wrought by overriding his work-dating veto, he came to an inescapable conclusion: He didn’t regret any of it.

“Who cares if you work together?” says Dailakis, now a comedian and actor. “I just don’t believe in that taboo anymore. If life throws you an opportunity, you’re crazy not to take it.”

The advantages of dating at work are clear. As Losee points out, you’re fishing in a pool of known quantities. And that means not only knowing someone’s job title, but seeing how they behave when they’re not trying to impress a first date.

“You learn so much working with someone,” says Lisa Johnson Mandell, who’s penned books about both career and dating pursuits, and is an advocate of combining them. “You get to see how someone acts under pressure and works with others.”

Meanwhile, the arguments against it are easily dispatched. No. 1: The company will frown on it. Much of the time that’s just not true, says Losee, who believes employers “are secretly for it, because it increases engagement. It makes people excited to come to work.”

That view is echoed by sales guru and motivational speaker Grant Cardone, who as owner of several businesses says he’s happy to see workers get involved.

“What do I care? I hope they fall in love and spend more time together talking about work — that would be a great situation for me,” he says. “As a boss I want one thing, production. If it would make them happy to date their desk, then get it on.”

Sure, there are those human resources types who object, especially if they’re spooked about harassment claims. But can we just agree that none of us needs to have our love life dictated by the same people who administer our 401(k)s?

Ah, but the naysayers tell us, office love is all well and good while the fire burns hot. But when the embers cool and someone gets dumped, everyone’s up a creek.

OK, getting dumped by someone you work with stinks. But getting dumped by anyone stinks. You do the same thing at work you’d do under any circumstances: suck it up and deal with it. And the workplace can provide a superego that keeps the lovelorn id in check, sparing everyone from distracting histrionics.

“Nobody is going to stalk you and be ridiculous, because there are consequences,” says Losee.

And if performance suffers — well, the lovestruck laggard was a weak link who’d have been revealed sooner or later anyway, says Cardone.

Bottom line, he says: “It’s not a church, it’s work.”

And even if it ends badly, headhunter Viscusi’s office-romance maxim holds true: “Better to have loved at work and lost than to never have loved at all.”