Dating a Colleague: Good or Bad Idea?

Despite all the warnings against office love stories, numerous employees start relationships with their co-workers. This was made clear by the results of the poll, conducted by Meetville.com (dating app to find the right person) between 11/4/14 and 12/19/14.

32,222 participants responded to the following question: “Would you date a co-worker?” A whopping majority of 79% gave a definite “Yes” to it.

Work is the place where people spend a lot of time and it’s quite natural that some of them may become friends and even more than that. But it’s really difficult to maintain good business and emotional relationships, especially if you want to keep the whole thing a secret. That’s why most of workplace love affairs often end in tears. According to Art Markman, professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University of Texas at Austin, “The big reason why workplace relationships can cause problems is called the dual relationship principle. This term comes from the ethical principles given to treatment providers like clinical psychologists. The idea is that when a clinician treats a patient, they now have a doctor-patient relationship between them. Any other relationship (friend, lover, business) can cause a conflict-of-interest between that relationship and the clinical relationship. And so, clinicians are barred from having any other relationship with their patients.”

It’s curious that the majority of positive votes (78%) belong to men. While only 22% of women are ready to start romantic relationships with a colleague.

Alex Cusper, Meetville service analyst, assumes that not all the workplace affairs are destined for failure. If people work at the same place, they may have similar goals and life interests. As any other type of relationships, office relationships may work or not. It’s crucial to know what makes them fail or succeed.

Meetville, a leading mobile dating service, regularly conducts research among its users. Millions of people from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Australia answer hundreds of questions every month. You can find the results of the poll here. If you are interested in research on a particular topic, please contact us. Any reprint of the material should be followed by clickable links to the survey.