Trend Alert: The Office Affair Is Back

men.style.com/details:

Tim was 28 and had been married for two years when he started working as a commercial producer at a company in Santa Monica, California. He immediately took a liking to the receptionist, a tanned, friendly 25-year-old.

"She couldn't have been nicer or have represented the company in a more positive way," he recalls. "Also, there was her body."

When she was promoted to assistant producer, they had such a good time working closely together--he would give her advice about how to get ahead as a producer, she would IM him about music, and they would have a few beers after work together to unwind--that Tim began to look forward to arriving at the office the way some guys anticipate leaving it.

"My marriage started to go south," Tim, now 32, says. "Whether it was because of her, who knows? But I wasn't happy at home, and I was so happy going to work."

Six months after the flirtation began, Tim and his wife separated. A week later, he and the receptionist turned producer consummated their office flirtation. Soon they'd had sex in all seven of the company's editing suites.

If this sounds like the kind of scenario that exists only in porn movies, you should start looking up from your spreadsheets once in a while. Through the nineties, office affairs were typically confined to hurried liaisons after holiday parties or at boozy Las Vegas sales conferences. And even then, most men feared those dalliances would get them fired or sued for sexual harassment. But now sexual harassment claims have decreased--21 percent fewer were filed in 2007 than in 1997--and a more relaxed environment has well-paid professionals trolling the corridors for willing sex partners like the overheated colleagues on The Office do, without worrying about getting sued.

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Comments

[bikerdude]

The office affair is back? I wasn't aware it left. In today's work environment, that's one of the few benes left, if you play your cards right....I certainly haven't seen any slacking off in this area...Maybe its just the water down here in Florida...

[PhillyQuaker]

I remember a new partner arriving at our office in a floor length fur coat. Partial settlement of her divorce from her husband, who was also her former boss, a much older married man. Many people looked up to this woman but really, I thought it was pathetic to screw your way to the top, dump the guy, get lots of money and move on. Wonder how the guys first wife handled all that.

[bikerdude]

Probably has to wash her own Mercedes, hire her own help...Life gets tough.....

[mediamarv]

No it's not.

And certainly not because you said so.

[lolitabanjo]

It's telling that the men in this article are portrayed as rational people who like having sex, whereas the women are either sluts or psychos. This outdated double standard deserves reexamining.

[MikeDu]

"...like the overheated colleagues on The Office do"

The Office is overheated?

I have one small quibble with the article. The attempted link of lowered percentage of sexual harassment claims to increased office romance. It sounds like poor oppressed women are throwing up their hands and submitting to their boorish bosses. May i suggest an alternate theory. As the workplace equalizes and the amount macho posturing diminishes coworkers start appearing more 'likeable'. Less sexual harrassment would produce more genuine human affection. Maybe I'm just a romantic.