One side of the workplace relationship
In the office bubble world, the average middle-classer with “you can do it!” dreams has a really long day ahead. He starts early in the morning with his first coffee. Brewed at home, using his top-of-the-line espresso machine — placed on a pedestal in his well to equipped kitchen. No time to cook, but the best accessories to do it anyway. Or he can buy coffee from his favorite coffee-shop. His Instagram account is used to it.
Everything goes smooth for a couple of hours, jumping from coffee to coffee, meetings and projects. On average we talk about an 8-hour working day, the classic shift, 40 hours per week.
Now, I don’t know if your work structure (and the company you’re working for) is more army-alike, with lesser breaks, “let’s finish what we got for today” and respect the 9–5/10–6 business hours, or the relaxed (latino) version with a lot of cigarette breaks, arriving approximately in time and having daily overtime (or else you have to face some hard looks from your employer and colleagues if you slam the door at 5/6 PM and came in late). What’s certain is that you spend more time at work than anywhere else. You may know your colleagues better than your family. You may even have family-related feelings for some of them.
No, the recommended 7–8 hours of sleep won’t count as ‘family time’, in spite the fact you’re at home.
If you have a long and stressful commute you can also cut some hours from your family time.
And the examples abovementioned apply to a happy case where there is someone to wait for you at home. Some kind of relationship you can wreck with your workoholism, or because of an erratic boss who has no work-home boundaries.
But what happens in the time spent at work?
According to some statistics, 38% of people have dated a coworker. 14% where lucky enough to find their better half at work. Sounds great if we think that only 11% of the relationships introduced by friends reach the altar. Seems that the office it’s a better wingman.
But even if it doesn’t get to the point where the two are looking for weeding locations and fight over the menu, there are still 38% that manage to stay together for some time.
An interesting fact about work-couples is that in their personal universe it develops an uncertainty feeling. Doubt and emotional insecurity, based on the fact that at one point one of them will work somewhere else. When that happens hell breaks loose.
Does it bother you when he/she laughs too much at another colleague’s jokes? When he/she compliments someone else’s work? See the bright side: at least he’s/she’s there, next to you. You go-come from work together. I hope.
At some point she/he is going to go somewhere else, a new office, new people, new schedule and new jokes that you won’t understand because “you weren’t there”. How do you feel listening daily stories ended with “you weren’t there”?
What stops you from thinking that she/he is going to find someone else? Just like you where found. At the workplace. I mean, he/she is spending more time there…
And that’s how a interesting and peculiar type of jealousy and anxiety occurs, initiated by the fact that one of the partners changed the structure that got them together. What if there’s a funnier one at the new job? A more attractive one? “A fascinating personality”? Oh, you don’t even want to thing about team-buildings and what’s going to happen there! And all your work-related fetishes that are now gone. At the new office.
Just like in professors Utonium recipe, if over a nice relationship started at work you add (by mistake?) the X element — a new job for one of the partners, you’ll have new topics to talk about during dinner. If both of them are there. “You are not the person I fell in love with at meetings”.
What to do?
Trust yourself, trust your partner and say a sincere “don’t leave me” when he/she leaves for the first day at the new job.
