Last year, I developed an office crush. My friends warned me against doing anything about it, typically using a crude metaphor about keeping your eating space clean. Dating people you work with just seems like too much trouble these days. It’s not that people aren’t attracted to Jack in client relations with the smile lines and overzealous David Lynch obsession; it’s that it feels as if the risk outweighs the reward.
But a return to office romance could be the solution to the sense many people have that modern dating is broken. Dating apps ask us to consider potential romantic partners not as full human beings with a caffeine addiction and tension-defusing sense of humor, but as a set of optimized digital parameters.
Only 16 percent of U.S. workers went on a date with a colleague last year, down from about 40 percent in 2009. Workplace crushes — a surefire way to inject excitement into office mundanity — have waned, too, with the share of workers reporting one collapsing from 49 percent in 2024 to just 22 percent in 2025, according to a human resources industry group survey. The decline has been decades in the making. While about one-fifth of adults over 50 met their partners at work, just 13 percent of those 18 to 29 say the same.
Of course, workplace romance was always fraught with its legacy of predatory bosses, favoritism and, when things go wrong, career retaliation. Years of sexual harassment training and more watchful human resources departments taught us not to go there (about a quarter of workers now fear harassment allegations, one industry survey found).
But where else in adulthood except the office would you bond with a potential paramour you share so much of everyday life with? Many of my friends’ parents met at work. So did Barack and Michelle Obama, who met while working at the same law firm in 1989. And pop culture has long endorsed office romance, too. From Sam and Diane in “Cheers” to Jim and Pam in “The Office” to, more recently, Mark and Helly in “Severance,” love and lust usurp professionalism every time. “Mad Men,” which unflinchingly depicts what workplace romance and harassment can look like at its worst, still showed Peggy ending up with her colleague Stan at the show’s conclusion.
Workplace romance offers promising levels of success: More than 40 percent of people who date a colleague end up marrying them, according to one survey. As young people struggle to meet one another, form relationships or even have sex, dating our colleagues could be a viable solution to the loneliness crisis and sex recession. Meeting at work forces people seeking romance to get to know each other platonically first. Seeing a potential partner’s true colors under stress — and how that person behaves around people he or she is not attracted to — can also be telling.
A lot of the problems with the apps our love lives now hinge on (pun intended) fall by the wayside in the office, too. When you’re bumping into someone by the coffee maker every morning, in-person interaction and accountability prevail over digital strategy. The impunity with which someone might treat a stranger met on an app, or even in a bar, cannot comfortably coexist with guaranteed daily interaction and myriad mutual connections. The workplace (ironically) humanizes us — at least when compared with dating apps.
The slow-burn surreptitiousness of keeping the romance secret can also bond you to a person. Hadrien Châtelet and Lucy Werner, a couple who met while working in a London-based office 13 years ago, told me about the excitement of staggering their entrances to the office after sleeping at each other’s houses, of kicking each other under the desk and of getting more “personal” in the doorless kitchen at the back. Working all day while waiting “to just sneak into a bar or something and be able to be more intimate,” Mr. Châtelet told me, brought excitement to the early days of their relationship. That’s a common thought: More than 90 percent of people who have had sex with a colleague didn’t regret it.
Dating a colleague does come with unsexy risks, too. It can be a distraction, ignite workplace gossip and grow uncomfortable if things sour. Workplace dynamics are also primed for power imbalances, harassment and coercion, especially if one party is the other’s superior.
In the workplace, rules that (should) apply to dating more generally are more critical than ever. Respectful, gentle approaches are paramount, as is proceeding further only with unambiguous consent and clear reciprocation. Lateral dating is always going to be a safer bet than an unequal power dynamic. And people who are most vulnerable to retaliation or sexism — especially women and underrepresented minorities — may still have more to lose by risking in-office romance, and may be disproportionately punished for it.
While a workplace romance can cause all kinds of problems, almost two-thirds of managers believed their teams benefited when colleagues dated, according to an industry survey. And despite some evidence of productivity declines, there’s little to suggest that those who are infatuated with or heartbroken because of a colleague are less productive than those who are merely infatuated or heartbroken at the hands of someone else. While it can be messy (multiple women competed over my workplace crush, with one jokingly saying we should “let the best woman win”), it makes you want to show up for work — and imbues getting dressed in the morning with giddy anticipation.
Almost everyone is frustrated with app-mediated romance. Dating a co-worker is not a surefire fix, but it’s certainly worth a shot. We never should have been given a blanket warning against dating our colleagues. Doing so asks us to repress our humanity. My office crush may not have worked out, but it brought joy and human connection to a space so often devoid of it. Many office romances do.
Risky and knotty as falling for a colleague can be, it’s also organic and inevitable. In the midst of a backlash against our tech-induced culture of optimization, ease and productivity, it’s time we recognized that love cannot be repressed for the sake of a profit-first environment. The people we spend half our waking lives alongside are probably a safer bet than strangers. So why not ask your colleague out? At the very least, you’re more likely to marry them than your Hinge match.
