Like When Your Bro Brings Yoko Ono Home

Office Romance Problems Effects & Etiquette (DOs & DON’Ts)

Like When Your Bro Brings Yoko Ono Home:
Family Dynamics, Team Dynamics, and Your Office Romance!

Falling in love with your co-worker, and having a co-worker office romance screws up your chances for Promotion / Pay Raise. Full stop. Why and how to fix it? Follow this Sex and the Workplace Deck, and find out.

Teams are very sensitive to cliques forming within them, and a lovey-dovey couple such as yourselves is such a clique, even though you’re are only two.

Why? Because when you behave as a couple, it tilts the whole group dynamics.

Group dynamics are an unspoken power structure, with a delicate equilibrium, a balance, that often took months, if not years, to achieve, to settle, in just that way, And now the whole thing is out of kilter, it tilts towards the couple (that is you, love birds).

Why? Because you, as a couple, have extra say now. Extra say means extra power, because you, as a couple, are a standalone unit of two, in the midst of everybody else, who is single individuals.

Moreover, this disruption and destruction to your team’s dynamics is worse, than had it been any other form of a clique.

Why? Because a romantic clique is, by default, a much more intimate and cohesive unit, which exacerbates the whole disruption, and triggers a potential disintegration of the team, as a whole. “And you want me to make you my latex salesman?”

Now, some of you may say “hey that’s not fair! How come my happiness, my relationship, has suddenly become the “bad guy”, and is now responsible for potentially wrecking the whole team? How come?”

My answer to that is: It is not a matter of whether it is fair, or unfair. That is irrelevant. It is just the way it is. This is true for all humans, across cultures, times, and situations.

Look, the best analogy is a family. (Mind you, a team at work and the family, are not the same, but some aspects of the relationships within them, definitely are).

So, think of yourself, and your nuclear family: Your parents, a sister and, a brother… If you have issues with one another, you can just talk to them directly, and resolve it. The three siblings and the two parents, are a unit, a team.

But before all three siblings were born, there were the parents as a couple. They had their own thing, their own equilibrium, their own balance: Who takes out the trash, who does the dishes, how they spend any free time, etc.

But then, with each child being added to this established dynamics, everything changes. New dynamics need to form, which is exactly why each birth, of each child, is a very (on top of very happy) very stressful time, in any family unit life.

Let’s take this analogy one step further. Now, each of you kids are grown, and suppose you need your brother to lend you some money, for whatever reason.

You go directly to him and ask for it. And since your brother’s allegiance is to you, as part of his nuclear family, he will probably agree and lend you the money you need.

But now, Let’s take another step further. Now you’re all adults and each of you is bringing a partner into the mix. Suddenly, the “original five” of you and your parents, are becoming 6 and 7 and 8… This is a whole new family.

Now if you want to ask your brother for a loan, he will have to get his wife’s consent, or even permission, because they have a joint bank account, and it’s not just for him to say what they do with the money.

And maybe she says ‘no’. What then?

So your family dynamics have completely shifted, once a couple (in the form of your brother and his wife) is introduced to it, as a couple. Thus, the whole relationship shifts.

In this scenario, you’re probably very frustrated that your sister-in-law is a factor in this equation. But she is. It will get even trickier when you marry, and when your sister marries. Your wife may not be so close with your sister-in-law, which will make you and your brother drift apart.

So to sum this point up: Any clique, of any sort, a romantic couple in particular, once introduced to a well-established group of people, whether a family or a team at work, disrupts and destructs, the equilibrium of that group, to the point of creating a lot of tension there.

And to bring it back home, as promised, ‘home’ being the office, the workplace, this tension will give further rise to the other BossProblems we’ve covered, and they will, indeed, screw up your chances of landing that promotion, and pay raise you so want.